U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents confiscated hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine that had been stashed in a teenager’s car.
The discovery was made on Christmas Eve at the Calexico West port of entry. A 16-year-old was driving through the port of entry in a 2012 Ford Focus. A K-9 team was working the port of entry and one of the dogs alerted officers to the vehicle.
When officers searched the vehicle, they discovered 220 pounds of meth hidden in the car’s “doors, back seat, quarter panels, rocker panels and spare tire,” WTHR reported. More from the outlet:
Officers removed 205 wrapped packages of methamphetamine weighing 220 pounds. The narcotics carry an estimated street value of $264,444.
The teen was arrested for the alleged narcotic smuggling attempt and turned over to the custody of Homeland Security Investigation agents for further processing.
The teen was transported to the Imperial County Juvenile Detention Center.
CBP seized the narcotics and vehicle.
The incident is the latest in a string of drug busts.
On November 18, a tractor-trailer driven by a 47-year-old Mexican citizen had a manifest claiming the vehicle was carrying “plastic garment hangers.” When the truck drove through the Otay Mesa Cargo port of entry, CBP officers performed an X-ray on the trailer and discovered an “anomaly.” They searched the vehicles with dogs and found 10 tons of marijuana, which carried an estimated street value of about $8.4 million.
“The ability of CBP officers to interdict contraband at the port of entry is a perfect example of CBP’s efforts to secure our border,” said Joseph Misenhelter, Officer in Charge at the Otay Mesa port of entry, at the time of the bust. “CBP officers prevented over 10 tons of marijuana from entering our community.”
A week before the tractor-trailer incident, agents at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport found 24 bottles of shampoo inside a man’s suitcase that were filled with liquid cocaine, for a total of 35 pounds of the drug. The estimated street value was around $400,000.
As The Daily Wire previously reported:
In mid-June, federal law enforcement officials in Philadelphia seized 16.5 tons of cocaine, the largest drug bust in the history of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
In September, Virginia police arrested more than 30 people suspected of possessing a massive quantity of fentanyl, enough to kill 14 million people. It was the largest drug bust in Virginia in the past 15 years, with authorities seizing more than 30 kilograms each of fentanyl and heroine, another five kilograms of cocaine, and more than $700,000.
“This opioid crisis is not an issue that is happening someplace else, or to someone else. It’s happening right here in Norfolk,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, G. Zachary Terwilliger, said during a press conference at the time of the arrests.
“We’re not talking about $500 and $600 deals, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he added. “You know, $20,000 in the trunk of somebody’s car in a gym bag, you know, behind a local restaurant.”
In late October, police in North Carolina arrested four people in connection with a drug trafficking scheme, seizing 6,800 pounds of marijuana, 39 pounds of cocaine, and $200,000.