Navigation
Join our brand new verified AMN Telegram channel and get important news uncensored!
  •  

PHOTO: Border Patrol seizes aircraft carrying almost $500K worth of meth, fentanyl across southern border

Soldiers from Ft. Riley, Kansas, work alongside with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and Border Patrol agents at the Hidalgo, Texas, port of entry, to strengthen areas along the border Nov. 2, 2018. (Senior Airman Alexandra Minor/U.S. Air Force)

A single-person aircraft was stopped late last week crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, where authorities found almost half a million dollar’s worth of illegal drugs.

Border Patrol seized the ultralight aircraft late Thursday near the Nogales and Tucson stations after tracking it electronically, officials said in a statement.

Agents found the plane abandoned on a rural dirt road, filled with two large plastic containers. Inside the containers were packages of more than 143 pounds of meth and more than 200 grams of fentanyl, worth about $500,000.

Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents assigned to the Nogales and Tucson stations seized a modified ultralight aircraft and its illicit cargo of nearly $500,000 in methamphetamine and fentanyl on May 23, 2019. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection/Released)

The pilot, however, had already fled.

Flying drugs across the border is less popular than other methods, but “transnational criminal organizations use a wide range of techniques to smuggle both humans and narcotics into the United States,” Border Patrol said in a statement.

Last year, a San Diego man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for using a remotely operated drone to smuggle 13 pounds of meth across the border.

———

© 2019 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.