On Sunday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Otay Mesa commercial facility discovered almost 1,200 small packages of methamphetamine hidden within a shipment of onions.
CBP officers encountered a 46-year-old driver of a tractor trailer with a shipment manifested as onions. During the inspection, the detector dog alerted the officers to the suspicious items. In the end, they discovered 1,197 packages of methamphetamine mixed with the onions in sacks. The methamphetamine in question is estimated to be worth around $2.9 million.
Despite being able to foil it, the CBP Director of Field Operations was compelled to admit the ingenuity of the smuggling plan. He also continued by praising the effectiveness of their officers in identifying the deception.
The driver of the onion-meth cargo, a Mexican citizen, had been turned over to the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for further disposition.