Despite the Trump administration closing the United States-Canada border to all nonessential travel in March, parts of the northern border have reported an uptick in the amount of drugs seized from smugglers driving through ports of entry, federal law enforcement officials told the Washington Examiner.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees land crossings along the 4,000-mile-long northern border, has made large drug seizures in upstate New York, Michigan, and Washington state.
At border crossings in Buffalo, New York, officers have seen a “significant increase” in narcotics found in passenger vehicles and commercial shipments since the border restrictions went into effect on March 21. Aaron Bowker, a spokesman for CBP’s Buffalo field office, said the amount of passenger traffic attempting to cross into New York from Canada has declined by as much as 95% over the past two months. As a result, officers have seen far fewer vehicles and fewer incidents of finding drugs, but when they do make a bust, they are seeing far larger quantities being smuggled, including cocaine, marijuana, and heroin.
Officers at the 16 land border ports of entry throughout New York have seized 3,100 pounds of drugs in 224 busts since late March, a 1,600% increase in pounds seized during the same time last year. In one incident, officers found 1,100 pounds of marijuana hidden in a commercial vehicle’s load of mulch.
“We have a decrease in the incident count because we’re not getting a lot of the onesie-twosies, 30 grams, maybe someone has a pound,” said Bowker. “We’re not seeing the little incidents. We’re seeing the larger incidents.”
Kris Grogan, spokesman for CBP’s Detroit field office, told the Washington Examiner that the amount of drugs found during the border closure is “definitely up.” Officers seized nearly 3,000 pounds of drugs, as well as a dozen guns, since the ban on nonessential travel went into effect. More than 2,800 pounds was marijuana, which Grogan noted was five times more than the total 500 pounds of marijuana the office seized in 2019.
Federal law enforcement in Washington state announced several major drug busts in recent weeks, including 500 pounds of marijuana found in a boat that was moving from Canada to Washington and $3 million of cocaine in a tractor-trailer driving southbound near Blaine, Washington.
Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff wrote in an email that the amount of fentanyl and marijuana stopped at the northern border between January and April had increased when compared to the same period last year but that it had not gone up among cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine.
“It is too soon to identify exactly what is causing these changes and how the COVID virus and subsequent social distancing orders have changed drug trafficking in the U.S. and across the globe,” Pfaff wrote. “DEA remains vigilant in monitoring and tracking domestic and global changes in drug trafficking due to the pandemic; however, we will not have a true sense of specific impacts for some time.”
