[throwaway7356]

Debian doesn't ship files in /usr/local.

You can of course add your own "apt" binary in /usr/local/bin/apt which can be written in any language you like, say COBOL, Java, Common Lisp or Python.

[zahlman]

Ah, of course. I guess this wrapper is provided by Mint.

[throwaway2037]

I am curious: What does the wrapper do? Can you share the source code here?