The Tri-Border Area is not a single cartel redoubt; it functions as a services hub where diversified illicit markets—cocaine logistics, counterfeit and grey trade, as well as environmental crime—plug into dense river and road networks. Brazilian prison mafias, diaspora business networks, and political–business facilitators exploit the overlap, while disintegrated policing stalls at jurisdictional seams. New mapping of the TBA’s “illicit trade hub” dynamics from George Mason University’s Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) program shows a marketplace built on brokerage—storage, document prep, currency exchange—rather than a command pyramid. The structure is resilient: arrest a boss and the services route around the outage.