El Centro border agents see an upsurge in drug trafficking

[Borderwatch]

http://ivnews.info/news/el-centro-bo...afficking/4722

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December 31, 2009 @ 4:41 pm

By ivnews.INFO Staff | ivnews.INFO

El Centro Border Patrol agents say one of the latest seizures of narcotics at a local highway checkpoint is evidence of a “significant increase” in drug trafficking during the last two months.
Border Patrol agents at the Hwy. 111 checkpoint near Niland find 27 pounds of methamphetamine stashed inside an after-market compartment in the spare tire well of a smuggler's vehicle on Dec. 28, 2009.

Border Patrol agents at the Hwy. 111 checkpoint near Niland find 27 pounds of meth stashed in a compartment in the spare tire of a vehicle on Dec. 28, 2009 --Photo by Border Patrol

Nearly 26 pounds of methamphetamine with a street value of more than $850,000 was detected by a canine team on Monday in a “luxury sedan” at the Highway 111 checkpoint near Niland. An imaging scan of the car led agents to 12 vacuum-sealed bags of the drug underneath the spare tire.

“In the few months since the fiscal year began,” reads a U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release, “the El Centro Sector has already surpassed last fiscal year’s total amount seized of heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine.”

Earlier this month, agents at the eastbound I-8 checkpoint near Yuma found nine packages of cocaine, weighing 22 pounds and worth about $746,400, stashed inside the dashboard of a vehicle. Since October 1, the start of the agency’s 2010 fiscal year, El Centro sector agents have
During a search of a car at the I-8 checkpoint near Yuma, border agents found more than $746,000 of cocaine in a dashboard. --Photo by Border Patrol

During a search of a car at the I-8 checkpoint near Yuma, border agents found more than $746,000 of cocaine in a dashboard. --Photo by Border Patrol

confiscated 534 pounds of the drug at the three checkpoints they man—Hwy. 111, Hwy. 86 south of Salton City, and I-8 east. According to agency figures, that is more than three times what they took from smugglers during the entire previous fiscal year.

Border Patrol figures also may indicate an upswing in heroin trafficking through the Imperial Valley. In the last 92 days agents stopped 970 pounds of the drug from crossing their local checkpoints, which, according to agency figures, is more than twice the amount seized during the 2009 fiscal year.

One of the larger seizures of drugs so far this year, made at the Hwy. 86 checkpoint, was $12 million worth of cocaine crammed into a stereo speaker box, a spare tire and a tool box of a SUV.