Border Patrol Nabs Record Pot Haul

By Stina Sieg
Published: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - 4:59pm

Border Patrol seized a record amount of marijuana on Monday. More than 20,000 pounds of pot were discovered at a port of entry near Nogales.

The large cache of marijuana is valued at more than $10 million. It was found hidden in a truck loaded with yellow squash. The Mariposa crossing point is used by commercial traffic, including trucks hauling Mexican produce into the United States.

Port director Guadalupe Ramirez called this seizure “very important” for him and fellow federal agents.

“We train, we develop systems to identify risk at a port of entry,” Ramirez said. “We manage the risk at our ports of entry to make sure that we’re applying our resources where they need to be, and this was a successful outcome of those efforts.”

This discovery surpasses the previous pot seizure record in Arizona of by more than 5,000 pounds. That record was set Jan. 15 of this year.