The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy offloaded more than $211 million worth of drugs on Monday, collected from seizures in international waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The 11,400 pounds of cocaine and 9,000 pounds of marijuana were intercepted in the last few months of 2020 by crews aboard four ships operating in the waters west and south of California.
DEA makes massive drug bust
“When you are covering a drug-smuggling transit zone the size of the continental United States, every ship makes a huge difference,” said Lt. Jonathan Dietrich in a written statement about the drug interception efforts.
The Coast Guard and Navy said they were pleased with the recent results of their joint efforts intercepting drugs at sea, and keeping them off the street in the United States, they say. The drugs were offloaded when the ships returned to San Diego.
The Navy and Coast Guard’s efforts against drug smugglers at sea are part of a coordinated operation aimed at transnational criminal organizations, fueled by drug trafficking money, by disrupting the flow of drugs from Central and South America.
Federal authorities on Wednesday showed off results of Southern California raids early this month that led to the biggest domestic seizure of methamphetamine in U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration history.
Mexican cartels getting rich off Americans
The 2,224 pounds (1,008.7 kilograms) of methamphetamine was seized Oct. 2 during an investigation of a drug-trafficking organization with ties to the Sinaloa cartel, the DEA said in a statement.
The investigation led to search warrants being served at narcotics stash houses in the Riverside County cities of Moreno Valley and Perris, east of Los Angeles.
DEA Acting Administrator Timothy J. Shea and other law enforcement officials displayed the evidence during a press conference at a DEA warehouse in Montebello.
“The largest DEA domestic seizure of methamphetamine in history is a significant blow to the cartels, but more importantly it is a gigantic victory for communities throughout Southern California and the United States who have had to deal with the torrent of methamphetamine coming into their neighborhoods,” Shea said.
