Thread: Man Caught Smuggling Contaminated Soil

http://www.elpasotimes.com/apps/pbcs.dl ... /1001/NEWS

Saturday, May 7, 2005

Man caught smuggling contaminated soil

Darren Meritz
El Paso Times

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said they caught a man smuggling 49 sandwich-size plastic bags of soil contaminated with unstable radium in a van crossing the Santa Teresa port of entry Thursday morning.

A 1994 Chevrolet van arrived at the port about 10:15 a.m., and Customs and Border Protection officers detected the radioactive element with a recently installed radiation portal monitor and then discovered the plastic bags hidden in the rear door panels of the van, officials said.

Officers determined that the driver of the van, whose name was not released, was hired to test soil from Mexico and planned to deliver the samples to a lab in California for analysis.

Though the driver did have U.S. Department of Agriculture authorization to import the soils through legal channels, Customs and Border Protection officials said he chose to smuggle the material to avoid fees associated with using a legal carrier.

Customs and Border Protection has detained the soil for examination and will try to determine whether it has any other dangerous qualities, such as contamination from pests.

"This is the second time in a week that an alert CBP agriculture specialist in the El Paso field office area has identified a shipment that posed a risk," said Luis Garcia, director of field operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in El Paso.

Earlier this week, Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists in El Paso discovered that wooden pallets of a shipment from the Pacific Rim had not been fumigated properly to prevent the entry of wood-borne pests into the United States, officials said.

Darren Meritz may be reached at dmeritz@elpasotimes.com; 546-6127.

This is nothing but a "feel good" story. The gov wants us to feel all warm-fuzzy and secure.

See how GOOD we are. Our great equipment found this small trace radiation. You little people are sooo safe. Nothing to fear.

Or in the immortal words of Officer Barbrady(sp)

Nothing to see here, move along

The BIG problem is we have NO security on 99.5% of the border. Someone who does (and it will happen) smuggle over radioactive crap, or worse yet, a nuke, certainly WILL NOT do so over the .5% of the border where they will be detected.

Grrrrrr! H.