220 Pounds of Cocaine Seized by Border Patrol

About 220 pounds of cocaine with a potential street value of more than $20 million was seized and two people were arrested Thursday by Border Patrol agents at the San Onofre immigration checkpoint south of San Clemente.

The cocaine seizure, which authorities said was the biggest ever made at the Border Patrol station, took place after a pickup truck was pulled over for a routine immigration inspection.

“This is very significant,” said Lt. Alan Fulmer, a division commander in the San Diego County Narcotics Task Force. “We don’t get 100 kilos every day.”

Mike Williams, deputy chief for the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, called it “a major seizure for the West Coast,” noting that the largest amount of cocaine confiscated at the San Onofre checkpoint previously was about 50 pounds.

Arrested on suspicion of possession and transportation of cocaine were Jose Arturo Leon, 40, and Lucia Margarita Aparacio, 21, an undocumented alien from El Salvador, authorities said. Leon, a native of Mexico, is a junkyard sales clerk in Lennox in Los Angeles County.

Williams said a 3-year-old girl riding in the truck with the two adults would be turned over to San Diego County authorities and placed, at least temporarily, in a foster home. Agents have not determined whether the girl was a relative of either adult, he said.

Leon and Aparacio were arrested about 3 p.m. after Border Patrol agents, searching for illegal aliens hiding in the bed of the brown import pickup truck, came upon the cocaine in four suitcases and under a blanket in the truck’s bed.

As the pair pulled up to the immigration station on Interstate 5, Agent Kathy Cunningham ordered them to drive into a secondary checkpoint after she “noticed some uneasiness” about the couple and grew suspicious that they were illegal aliens, Williams said.

After determining that Aparacio was in the country illegally, Border Patrol agents conducted a routine search for other aliens in the pickup’s bed, which was covered by a black, snap-on tarp.

Most of the cocaine was stashed in four suitcases, but about two dozen brick-sized packages wrapped in plastic or masking tape were piled in the bed and covered with a blanket, officials said.

Authorities were not sure Thursday as to the exact strength of the drugs that were confiscated, but Fulmer said cocaine smuggled in brick form usually is at least 80% pure.

More Common

Fulmer said such seizures may become more common as cocaine traffic shifts to California and the Southwest because authorities are increasingly cracking down on drug operations in south Florida.

“This is the beginning of many more of these types of things,” he said. “We’re going to start feeling the influx.”

The drug seizure was like “a grain of sand on the beach,” Fulmer said, noting that far more cocaine is smuggled into Southern California than authorities confiscate.

Harold Ezell, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s western region, rushed to the San Onofre station after learning of the drug seizure and held an impromptu news conference, drawing, among others, former ABC newsman Geraldo Rivera, who was in San Diego County to make a documentary on drugs.

“To me, you can’t separate the illegal alien from illegal drug traffic,” Ezell declared. “We’re either going to get buried by a drug wave that threatens to ruin the next generation, or an immigration wave that will make us a Third World country, or both within five years if we don’t watch it.”