US Customs and Border Protection officers in southern California made a significant bust, discovering over $5 million worth of methamphetamine hidden in a shipment of supposed watermelons. The 29-year-old driver, attempting to enter the US from Mexico, was referred for additional examination at the Otay Mesa Commercial Facility near San Diego.<\/p>\n
Upon inspection, officers found 1,220 packages of methamphetamine, weighing nearly 4,600 pounds, wrapped in paper and disguised as watermelons. The driver was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations, and the drugs and tractor-trailer were seized.<\/p>\n
This bust was part of Operation Apollo, targeting fentanyl smuggling in southern California and Arizona. Earlier this month, CBP officers intercepted 629 pounds of methamphetamine hidden in a celery shipment, valued at $755,000.<\/p>\n
So far in 2024, CBP has seized nearly 146,000 pounds of methamphetamine, exceeding last year’s total. Methamphetamine was responsible for approximately 30% of nearly 108,000 drug-related deaths in 2022, according to CDC data. The synthetic stimulant has a high potential for abuse and addiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US Customs and Border Protection officers in southern California made a significant bust, discovering over $5 million worth of methamphetamine hidden in a shipment of supposed watermelons. The 29-year-old driver, attempting to enter the US from Mexico, was referred for additional examination at the Otay Mesa Commercial Facility near San Diego. Upon inspection, officers found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":45472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[1403],"class_list":["post-45470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-us-customs"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45475,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45470\/revisions\/45475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}