3 incidents yield almost 2 tons of pot along border
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.20.2008

U.S. Border Patrol agents seized nearly 3,900 pounds of marijuana in three separate incidents Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Wednesday at 1 a.m., agents spotted vehicle tracks leaving Federal Route 1 about 24 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border on the western part of the Tohono O'odham Reservation, said Rob Daniels, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. About half a mile off the paved road, agents found a GMC pickup truck with a tarp covering the bed.

They found 66 bundles of marijuana under the tarp weighing a total of 1,582 pounds, Daniels said. There was nobody in the vehicle, and agents didn't find anybody in a search of the area. It appears the bundles were taken across the border on foot and loaded into the truck, he said.
The truck and marijuana were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The other two seizures occurred on Tuesday.
At 11 a.m., agents pulled over a suspicious-looking truck with a flatbed trailer on the back on a Forest Service Road in the San Rafael Valley near Lochiel east of Nogales, Daniels said. Agents brought in a drug-sniffing dog, which helped them find a hidden compartment in the trailer. Inside, they found 1,548 pounds of marijuana.

The driver, a Mexican man who had a border-crossing card, was arrested and, along with the drugs, turned over to the DEA.

At 1:45 p.m. Tuesday west of Naco, agents found 768 pounds of marijuana in a truck that had crashed into a barbed- wire fence on Bureau of Land Management land close to Arizona 92, Daniels said. Agents had earlier spotted a group of backpackers carrying the drugs, which were loaded into the truck in 33 bundles, he said.

The drug-runners were spotted running back to Mexico. Shortly after, agents found the truck. The driver, a U.S. citizen with an extensive history of drug-trafficking, was arrested and turned over to the DEA.

The 3,898 combined pounds of marijuana have an estimated value of $2.241 million, using figures from the National Drug Intelligence Center.

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