ORLY, France (AFP) — Every day they come. Drug mules from French Guiana in South America, carrying cocaine in their luggage or their stomachs, playing a cat-and-mouse game with customs officials at Paris' Orly airport.
Some get caught. Some do not. The risks are high, but they have little to lose.
In the customs office, 31-year-old "Henriette" waits on a plastic chair. Her name, and those of other mules in this report, have been changed to protect their identities.
Arrested on arrival in Paris, Henriette sits with her arms folded, head hanging, expressionless. Next to her, a large pink suitcase in which a scan revealed suspicious dark shapes.
An agent opens the case. "There are only T-shirts... it's autumn here Madam..." she enquires.
But Henriette, sporting a black T-shirt, does not reply: she does not speak a word of French, only one of a clutch of local languages used in Guiana, a French overseas department.
The agent pulls out seven packets marked as containing Asian seaweed.
"This is not complicated: It should be light and soft, but it is compact and weighs more than a kilo," says an agent with a sceptical air who goes on to unwrap the packages and remove their outer layers of algae to reveal black, brick-shaped parcels.
Officers had detained Henriette because her hands were trembling as she gripped the handlebar of her luggage trolley.
Jean-Pierre, 21, was brought in because he had a "robotic gait" typical of people who tape cocaine bullets to their thighs or insert it into their rectums.
Shorts in winter
Other giveaways? "Some wear shorts in winter, they do not know who is fetching them at the airport, or they say they're going to Toulouse (440 miles away)... by taxi," said customs official Olivier Gourdon.
The Cayenne-Orly route, with two incoming flights per day, has become the most popular air passage for South American cocaine to France.
Last year, 1,349 mules in or from Guiana were arrested, double the 2017 number, police data shows.
With an estimated 8 to 10 smugglers per flight, the drug gangs are trying to "saturate the control capacities" of French customs, said Gourdon.
Some among the mules are “sacrificed.”
They are given only hand luggage which means they will go through customs first, with only a bit of product, poorly disguised.
Sometimes they are given up in an anonymous call — all to distract customs officials while those with the bigger hauls slip through.