A former officer with U.S. Customs and Border Protection will spend more than 13 years in prison for his role in a cocaine smuggling conspiracy.
Late last week, 51-year-old Juan Posas Jr. went before U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez who sentenced him to 162 months in prison to be followed by five years of supervised release.
According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, the sentencing is the result of a June 27 trial where jurors deliberated for only two hours before finding Posas guilty of cocaine trafficking conspiracy.
According to prosecutors, on June 6, 2022, Posas met with Alexis Soria Soria, a 25-year-old man who was living in the U.S. illegally. At the time of his arrest, Posas lived in Raymondville and was an officer with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Posas and Soria met in the parking lot of a Home Depot in the city of Weslaco, Texas, where Posas received a box with 20 kilograms of cocaine. Prosecutors also had recordings of Posas and Soria discussing the smuggling of drugs.
Agents with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations had been investigating Posas for some time and obtained recorded phone conversations where would discuss drug trafficking activities with other individuals in exchange for money.
During his June trial, Posas tried to claim that he did not know that the box that Soria had given him contained cocaine and that he was simply buying a box of fruit.
The case comes at a time when the Rio Grande Valley continues to be one of the busiest drug and human smuggling corridors in the United States.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.