28.5 Million Lethal Doses of Fentanyl Busted by Arizona Authorities in Separate Border Bust; Can Wipe Arizona’s Population 4 Times: CBP Raise Alarm
Agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection keep taking away huge amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamine, guns, and bullets at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, Arizona.
Agents continued to catch people they thought were trying to bring drugs into the U.S. or guns into Mexico. Law enforcement officials said that cartel and gang members often use stolen cars to bring drugs and people into the U.S. and guns, ammunition, cash, and other illegal items into Mexico.
Attorney General Michael Humphries said that last month, CBP officials seized a load of more than three million fentanyl pills. The police used a dog team to search a utility trailer and find about 3,372,300 fentanyl pills hidden in the hollow steel beams that made up the floor of the trailer.
Seven out of ten fentanyl pills that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency seizes have a deadly dose of fentanyl in them, the agency says.
By the DEA’s measure, CBP officials found enough fentanyl pills in this one seizure to kill at least 2.36 million people.
At a different stop, CBP agents working on their way out took 13,460 rounds of assault rifle ammunition. They searched the car and found the ammo hidden in one of the doors, between the panels, and in the firewall.
At another stop on the way out, they found 53,858 rounds of different calibers of ammo, two handguns, nine M13 thermobaric devices, and 18 magazines. Humphries said the “large amount of munitions” and ammo were likely going to arm and help cartel operations.
At a different stop, CBP officers working for the Nogales POE found 323 pounds of methamphetamine hidden inside a shipment of charcoal. Some of the bags had meth hidden inside packages that looked like charcoal logs. The meth was mixed in with the charcoal. A K9 dog helped find the hidden items.
AddictionResources.net says that 200 milligrams of methamphetamine is the amount that will kill you. Based on how much was found, this number tells us that they found enough meth to kill over 2,267 people as per The Center Square.
Nogales POE CBP officers found about 265,275 fentanyl pills in a spare tire at one stop on May 26 in the week before Memorial Day weekend. On May 28, they found 56 pounds of meth hidden in a spare tire and took it away. On May 29, they found about 22,050 fentanyl pills that a person suspected of smuggling had tied to his legs. Also found were about 49,950 fentanyl pills that were hidden in a car battery.
They found so much fentanyl and meth that it could have killed over 25.6 million people in just a few stops.
At a separate stop, they found about 700,000 fentanyl pills hidden in food containers, boxes, cans, and packages in the trunk of a car. The amount that was taken was enough to kill over 490,000 people, which is more than the populations of all but Phoenix, Tucson, and Mesa in Arizona put together.
“Police are still looking for dangerous opioids with great care,” Humphries said.
A little more than 7 million people live in Arizona, which is about four times the amount of fentanyl and meth that police found in these few stops.
Part of the CBP Tucson Sector is the Nogales POE. This sector is one of the busiest in the country for agents fighting crime. It is about 65 miles from the border between the United States and Mexico and is the only business way for people from Nogales, Sonora, Mexico to get into the United States.
A total of $28.6 billion worth of goods went through the Mariposa Nogales POE in 2022, according to the Greater Nogales Santa Cruz County Port Authority.
The port authority says that more than 10.3 million people crossed through the port of entry from Mexico into Arizona in 2023. This included almost 382,000 trucks, 3.7 million cars, 889 trains, and almost 3 million people walking.
In the last three fiscal years, CBP Tucson OFO agents have caught a high number of people crossing the border illegally. CBP statistics shows that from the beginning of fiscal year 2024 until April 2024, they caught 28,292 people crossing the border illegally. This is almost as many as they caught in all of fiscal year 2023, which was 29,086. Most of those caught were adults who were alone.
According to statistics from the CBP, they caught 9,929 people in fiscal year 2022 and 6,659 people in fiscal year 2021.
