A commercial tractor-trailer driver was caught transporting more than $10 million worth of narcotics into the U.S. from the southern border, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials said Thursday.
The 28-year-old driver was intercepted Wednesday morning at Otay Mesa Cargo Facility in San Diego, California, where CBP officers pulled hundreds of “suspicious packages” from “vats of jalapeno paste” from the truck, a press release stated.
The unnamed driver, whom officials say is a valid border-crossing card holder, was screened by a CBP K-9 unit that alerted officers to examine the trailer more closely.
Upon further examination, the contents of the packages were identified as 3,161.43 pounds of methamphetamine and 522.50 pounds of cocaine.
In total, 332 packages of methamphetamine and cocaine weighing 3,684 pounds were seized from the shipment.
CBP estimates the street value of the drugs as $10,430,000.
The tractor-trailer was seized, and the driver was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations for further processing, officials said.
“Our K-9 teams are an invaluable component of our counter-narcotics operations, providing a reliable and unequaled mobile detection capability,” said Rosa Hernandez, director of Otay Mesa Port.
“By implementing local operations under Operation Apollo and CBP’s Strategy to Combat Fentanyl and other Synthetic Drugs, we will continue to secure communities and stifle the growth of transnational criminal organizations, one seizure after another,” she added.
In November, the San Diego CBP Field Office seized more than 14,000 pounds of narcotics while conducting security operations at California’s land ports of entry, the agency said.