NOGALES, Ariz. — It seems there’s no end to the creative ways smugglers try to bring drugs across the border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials this week shared photos of suspects who strapped drugs around their legs and taped them around their stomachs, hoping to get past border checkpoints undetected.
Those methods didn’t work so well over the holidays for the alleged smugglers, KPHO reports.
Customs and Border Protection officers arrested two people two days before Christmas for separate attempts to smuggle a combined $224,000 worth of methamphetamine and heroin through the Port of Nogales.
Officers working with a CBP narcotics detection canine a found more than 19 pounds of meth and 9 nine pounds of heroin, worth more than $209,000, in the rocker panels of a Dodge hatchback. The car was driven by a 35-year-old Tucson woman.
Later that night at another crossing, officers stopped a 26-year-old man from Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, driving a Dodge truck.
Instead of finding drugs in the vehicle, however, officers found 5 pounds of meth, worth approximately $15,000, strapped around the man’s midsection as well as around his calves.
Officers seized all drugs and vehicles and turned both subjects over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.
