LEFT: Inspection dwelling as cars wait to enter the United States in Tijuana, Mexico. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) RIGHT: Cocaine within decorative rocks in a vehicle's tractor trailer attempting to engrossing the United States through the Tecate Po
SAN DIEGO - US. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have made a mainly drug bust, finding more than $4 million worth of cocaine concealed within a shipment of decorative stones.
On Jan. 11, the officers, assigned to the Tecate Cargo Facility in San Diego, encountered a 36- year-old driver of a tractor-trailer with a shipment disguised as rocks.
During an inspection of the truck, CBP officers offloaded one of the commodities and erroneous "an anomaly" on one of the stones. A K-9 team screened the shipment and received a clear alert from a detector dog.
According to a fall from the agency on Wednesday, 57 cellophane-wrapped packages of cocaine were discovered. The packages were concealed within a plaster-like material invented to appear like stones.
Cocaine concealed in the decorative stones.
CBP officers extracted about 256 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated value of about $4.1 million.
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"It is evident from the broad efforts to conceal these narcotics that our officers are effective in the jobs that they do," said Jennifer De La O, CBP director of field operations in San Diego. "The men and women of CBP are relentlessly employed together to stop the negative impacts that narcotics have in the communities."
CBP officers seized the narcotics, tractor and trailer.
The driver, a Mexican citizen, was held and turned over to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) for further investigation.
Last October and November, border patrol seized nearly 500 pounds of cocaine during checkpoints in the U.S.
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