(Credit: US Customs and Border Protection)
(CNN Spanish) --
Agents from the United States Customs and Border Protection Office seized nearly $3 million in methamphetamine hidden in small packages inside a shipment of onions in San Diego, the agency reported Friday.
On Sunday, February 20, federal agents encountered a 46-year-old man at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry on the border with Mexico driving a tractor-trailer containing a large shipment "manifested as onions," according to the release.
After an initial inspection, a border agent instructed the driver to submit his vehicle to a more thorough search by the agency's K-9 canine team.
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Immediately afterwards, one of the detection dogs alerted the agents to the shipment, who eventually discovered 1,197 packages of methamphetamine, for an approximate total of more than 605 kilos, with an estimated street value of US$2.9 million, they explained. The authorities.
The packages, which were mixed with the shipment of bagged onions, "were in the form of small balloons with a white cover, designed to blend in with the onions they were hidden with," the statement said.
Agents arrested the driver, an unidentified Mexican national, for the suspected attempted narcotics smuggling and turned him over to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations for "further disposition," according to the CBP.
They also seized the vehicle, the trailer and the narcotics, the entity added.
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"Not only was this a clever attempt at trying to smuggle narcotics, one I hadn't seen before, but it also took a long time to wrap the narcotics in these little packages, designed to look like onions," said Sidney Aki, director of the Bureau. of Customs and Border Protection operations in San Diego.
"These efforts show how effective our agents are and, in response, how far drug trafficking organizations are willing to go when attempting to smuggle narcotics into the United States," the statement continued.
"While we have seen narcotics in products before, it is unusual for us to see this level of detail in the concealment," the statement said.
methamphetamines