Customs and Border Protection agents in San Diego performed three seizures Tuesday, netting nearly 300 pounds of narcotics, worth around $4 million in street value, the agency announced Friday.
The first seizure took place near an exit on U.S. Interstate 8 at around 5 a.m. local time. After initiating a vehicle stop, CBP officers from the Campo station had drug dogs sniff out the vehicle, finding 57 packages of blue fentanyl pills, weighing 250 pounds in total. The confiscated drugs are worth an estimated $3,412,000 in street value.
Later that day around noon, CBP agents from the Newton-Azrak patrol station stopped another vehicle, just north of the U.S. Interstate 15 border station in Murrieta, California. After investigation, the authorities found and seized 33 pounds of cocaine worth approximately $448,500 on the streets.
Minutes later at around 12:16 p.m., other CBP officers, also from the Newton-Azrak patrol station, halted another vehicle on an off-ramp of California Interstate 215 in Murrieta. Searching the vehicle turned up 9.4 pounds of fentanyl and 4.9 pounds of heroin, with a street value of around $178,000. A 40-caliber handgun was also taken.
In all three cases, the vehicles, suspects, and narcotics were handed over to partnering law enforcement. The gun confiscated in the third case was also handed over.
“San Diego Sector Border Patrol continues to do our part to keep drugs out of our communities. Every narcotics seizure our agents make is one less family member or neighbor that is poisoned by these drugs,” said San Diego Sector Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke.
