Heightened port security paying off

Since it was quietly deployed at the nation’s busiest harbor complex in October, a new anti-smuggling task force has seized 140 pounds of cocaine bound for Australia, dozens of weapons headed for Mexico and 20 pounds of methamphetamine in cars being shipped to Hawaii.

The main mission of the multi-agency Border Enforcement Security Task Force, headquartered inside a former detention facility on Terminal Island, is to “shut down criminal organizations that exploit the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Robert A. Schoch.

But it kept a stealthy profile until Thursday, when it was unveiled at a waterfront news conference amid terminals, cranes, big rigs, railroads and thousands of shipping containers it investigates under the auspices of the federal Department of Homeland Security.

The 17-member task force is made up of officers from nine federal, state and local agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service, California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles Port Police, the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Air Marshal Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“We’re the first [task force] unit to be launched at a seaport,” Schoch said. Similar operations are planned for the ports of New York and Miami.

L.A. Port Police Chief Ronald Boyd said the task force has strengthened collaborative ties between agencies that tended to work independently while fighting drug, immigrant, currency and weapons smuggling, trade fraud and cargo theft in the 10,700-acre complex.

Each year, the area handles about 8,000 commercial vessels and 16 million containers carrying cargo valued at $378 billion -- a tempting target of opportunity for criminal organizations.

“Within weeks of hanging their shingle over the door, they proved themselves with interdictions that have had a major impact on public safety,” Boyd said. “They put money, drugs and guns on the table in a remarkably rapid fashion.”

A month ago, the unit discovered more than 140 pounds of cocaine concealed inside concrete decorative pedestals being shipped from Mexico through the Port of Los Angeles to Australia, Schoch said. Officers alerted Australia’s Federal Police and that country’s Customs Service, which assisted in the investigation that led to the arrest of three Mexican nationals who were charged with drug trafficking.

In a separate case, officers intercepted two caches of weapons that investigators determined were bound for Mexico. They included a grenade launcher, numerous semiautomatic AR-15s, a sawed-off rifle, bulletproof vests and a silencer that authorities said were destined for drug cartels in Mexico.

Sahagun is a Times staff writer.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com