A Coast Guard vessel returned from its deployment off the east coast of Central America with nearly half a billion dollars worth of cocaine, a load that weighs about as much as a dozen Honda Civics.
Coast Guard cutter Forward docked in Port Everglades with 34,000 pounds of cocaine it seized from drug smugglers who were caught transporting it from Central America and South America to the U.S.
The Forward offloaded $466 million worth of the narcotic in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Tuesday. The drugs were the result of 21 separate boat busts between cutters Forward, Hamilton, Campbell, Alert, Venturous, and Confidence — all of which were deployed to that region.
“The interdiction and disruption of more than 17 tons of cocaine is a result of the collaboration and coordination of multiple Coast Guard and interagency assets to address the complex maritime challenge of transnational criminal organizations,” the Forward’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Michael Sharp, said in a statement.
The Navy, Customs and Border Protection, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement all partnered to help the Coast Guard detect and respond to suspicious boats.
CBP said its Air and Marine Operations crews from Corpus Christi, Texas, and Jacksonville, Fla., detect and monitor smaller vessels they believe may be moving illicit drugs.
“Once a suspect vessel is detected, we work closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and our international partners in the Joint Interagency Task Force South to ensure it is intercepted far from U.S. shores. AMO is the largest contributor of flight hours to this effort, and we participated in over half of the drug interdictions that comprise today’s offload,” Acting Deputy Director Southeast Region Air and Marine Operations, Jeffrey Maher, told the Washington Examiner.
The East Pacific, which stretches from the Panama Canal up to Mexico and above Colombia, is a major transit zone for cocaine traffickers because it is largely produced in Colombia then moved via boat to Puerto Rico and onto the East Coast of the U.S.
The largest cocaine haul to date by the Coast Guard was $729 million last year.
