Border arrests land cache of weapons, cash

Seizures on U.S. side called 'alarming'
By Greg Moran, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 9:18 p.m.

Federal agents seized a cache of guns, ammunition and $51,000 in cash at the border over the weekend in the latest example of the flow of weaponry that heads south from the United States and often ends up in the hands of lethal drug cartels.

In two separate but related arrests, agents with Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement confiscated 16 weapons, including assault rifles and pistols.

Seven of the weapons were hidden in the compartment of a Nissan car driven by Norman Eduardo Figueroa, 19, who was arrested Saturday afternoon at the San Ysidro Port of Entry as he tried to cross into Mexico. The Chula Vista man appeared in federal court Tuesday and was ordered detained pending a hearing Friday.

According to court records, the Nissan he was driving was registered to Hendel Lopez, who lives in the 900 block of 16th Street in San Diego’s Egger Highlands neighborhood.

On Saturday night, agents monitored Lopez as he drove a white pickup from that home to a nearby hotel. The next morning he drove the pickup to a parking lot 300 feet away from the pedestrian crossing into Mexico.

It was there that a Border Patrol agent detained him and, after determining he was in the country illegally, searched the pickup with the help of a drug-sniffing dog. Agents found nine more weapons and the bundle of cash.

ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack said federal agents found the seizures of the weapons “serious and alarming.â€