Two 18-year-old Arizona residents were arrested near the Mexican border after authorities found nearly $ 2 million worth of smuggled methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin in their truck, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday.
The arrest by Border Patrol agents Saturday afternoon near Rio Rico happened after other people were seen emerging from some brush and placing packages in the parked truck, the CBP said in a statement Tuesday.
“We’ve got bigger seizures, but this one is undoubtedly large and it’s significant,” said Border Patrol Agent Daniel Hernandez, a public information manager for the Tucson sector. “The street value is pretty high.”
The agency estimates it is about $ 1.8 million.
After the packages were loaded at Peña Blanca Lake, which is northwest of the Nogales border crossing, the truck drove away. It was stopped and 57 packages of drugs were found inside, the Border Patrol said.
The names of the two arrested people, who were the driver of the Chevy Silverado and a passenger, were not released by Border Patrol, but they were handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration to prosecute federal prosecutors.
Requests for more information from the DEA’s Phoenix office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona were not immediately returned Tuesday, and it was not clear what the status of the two people arrested was.
The people who came out of the brush, packed packages in the truck and slipped back into the desert were not found, the Border Patrol said.
Hernandez said it is not uncommon for people to travel on foot from Mexico to the U.S. via mountainous or remote terrain, drop off drugs and return to Mexico. They are typically deployed at transnational criminal organizations.
That area of the border has historically been considered a marijuana corridor, he said.
“That’s declining, and now we’re seeing more frequent use of harder drugs and synthetic drugs,” Hernandez said.
The 18-year-olds are residents of Rio Rico, a community of about 19,000 north of the Nogales border, the Border Patrol said.
A 2019 DEA report says most of the methamphetamine available in the United States is produced in Mexico and smuggled across the southwestern border.
Mexico is also considered the primary source of heroin in the US, while most of the province’s cocaine is produced in Colombia.
