South Texas CBP officers note major uptick of illegal immigrants encountered and cocaine seized

Last year brought serious increases in encounters along south Texas ports of entry, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, who reported 10,243 pounds of cocaine seized and 57,732 non-U.S. citizens encountered in violation of immigration laws.

The figures spanned the period from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022 – collectively CBP’s fiscal year 2022.

“As nonessential traffic resumed early in Fiscal Year 2022, overall workload volumes returned to normal, but CBP officers continued to experience the ongoing trend of hard narcotics, particularly cocaine, and significant gains in encounters of individuals without valid entry documents,” said Eugene Crawford, acting director of Field Operations for the CBP Laredo Field Office. “The hard narcotics volume underscores the seriousness of the drug threat we face, and hemispheric economic and security challenges also tend to drive the migration volumes.”

The eight ports of entry involved sprawl from Brownsville to Del Rio, Texas. Combined, they took in 47,755 pounds of narcotics with an estimated street value of $436 million. Of particular note here was the aforementioned cocaine influx, which represented a 19 percent increase over fiscal year 2021 levels. Additionally, more than 30,400 pounds of methamphetamine and 280 pounds of fentanyl, 176 pounds of heroin, $5.8 million in unreported currency, 320 weapons and more than 78,000 rounds of ammunition were seized, among others.

The announcements of final methamphetamine figures, in particular, came less than a month after CBP announced that officers assigned to the World Trade Bridge in the Laredo Port of Entry region seized 98 pounds of methamphetamine worth more than $900,000 in a single tractor-trailer.

At the same time, CBP deemed more than 57,732 non-U.S. citizens – which it referred to as “inadmissibles” in its reporting – ineligible for entry due to violations of immigrations law. This meant a 177 percent increase in encounters and rejections over the previous fiscal year.

The agriculture side of things was no less busy. CBP specialists also intercepted and quarantined 99,264 animals and plant material, along with 5,015 pests.