14 DAY TRIAL // Sometimes drug traffickers don't even bother to find new drug smuggling methods and rely on old tricks that are sure to land them in jail.
Last week, officers with US Customs and Border Protection found and seized a ton of marijuana hidden within a commercial shipment of fresh limes from Mexico.
The officers working at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge cargo facility in Texas discovered the drugs, with an estimated street value of about $2,065,000 (€1,517,378), on May 23 inside a tractor-trailer importing limes.
After the initial examination, performed using a vehicle non-intrusive imaging system, CBP officers decided to conduct a secondary inspection on a red 2003 Kenworth tractor pulling a white 1999 Utility trailer which raised suspicions.
The second scan of the lime boxes revealed that 575 packages of weed weighing a total of approximately 2,065 pounds (nearly one ton) had been stashed among the fruits. According to Fox 44, authorities confiscated the weed, the tractor-trailer and the limes.
Pharr Port Director Efrain Solis Jr. said, “Our frontline CBP officers intercepted another big load of marijuana this weekend at our commercial facility in Pharr. This mirrors previous seizures of this narcotic and shows that drug smuggling organizations have not abandoned this method in their attempts to push marijuana across the border.”
No information was revealed about the people responsible for the lime shipment.