Federal border agents flying over Puerto Rico led law enforcement to $8.4 million worth of cocaine in a boat that had capsized and been abandoned in the water off the eastern coast of the island after a failed drug trafficking attempt.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Tuesday that its air and marine agents spotted a suspicious vessel in the water off the coast of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques late Sunday. Local police and Department of Homeland Security agents responded Monday to find 739 pounds of cocaine “bricks” concealed inside duffel bags on board the decrepit vessel. Federal authorities confiscated the narcotics.
Puerto Rico has become a hotbed for drug traffickers attempting to smuggle cocaine and heroin from Colombia in South America to the East Coast of the U.S.
Border officials in Puerto Rico seized 65,890 pounds of narcotics from drug cartels and smugglers in fiscal year 2017, more than any previous year. The nearly 66,000 pounds of drugs discovered in and around Puerto Rico that year was about 40% higher than the previous year’s 47,500 pounds.
Jeffrey Quinones, public affairs officer for CBP’s Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands outposts, told the Washington Examiner that the eastern Caribbean has served as a trafficking pit stop for decades, but the recent uptick indicates cartels are using the 100-mile-wide island to circumnavigate the Mexican border.
“Enhanced enforcement efforts along the Central America/Mexico corridor and on the U.S. Southwest border as well as the ongoing violence between rival TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] in Mexico may be contributing to the shift to more efficient, presumably less troublesome Caribbean routes,” according to the 2015 White House Caribbean Border Counternarcotics Strategy report.
Traffickers used to use small aircraft to drop shipments into the island in the 1980s and 1990s but now rely on go-fast boats, fishing vessels, luxury yachts, cruise ships, and containerized cargo. The majority of drugs CBP seized on the island last year was from go-fast boats, known locally as “yola” vessels. Many maritime smugglers depart Venezuela with the goal of getting products to the southern coast of Puerto Rico.
