Couple Held After Border Patrol Seizes 220 Pounds of Cocaine at Checkpoint

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.

The cocaine seizure, which authorities said was the biggest ever made at the Border Patrol station, occurred 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.” The most cocaine seized 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 illegal alien from El Salvador, authorities said. Leon, a native of Mexico, is a junkyard sales clerk in Lennox in southwest Los Angeles County.

Williams said a 3-year-old girl riding with the couple would be turned over to San Diego County authorities and placed in a foster home, at least temporarily. Agents have not determined whether she was related to either suspect.

The incident occurred about 3 p.m., when the brown import pickup truck pulled up to the immigration station along Interstate 5 about 15 miles north of Oceanside. Agent Kathy Cunningham ordered the couple to drive into a secondary checkpoint after she “noticed some uneasiness” and became suspicious that they were illegal aliens, Williams said.

After determining that Aparacio was in the country illegally, Border Patrol agents looked in the truck’s rear bed, which was covered by a black, snap-on canvas tarp.

The bulk 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 only by a blanket.

Authorities were unsure about the purity of the drugs, but Fulmer said cocaine smuggled in brick form is usually at least 80% pure.

Fulmer said Thursday’s seizure was “the beginning of many more of these types of things. We’re going to start feeling the influx,” which he attributed to a drug crackdown in Florida and a shift of cocaine traffic to the Southwest.

The seizure, he said, was like “a grain of sand on the beach,” because 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 Border Patrol station after learning of the drug seizure and held an impromptu news conference.

“To me, you can’t separate the illegal alien from illegal drug traffic,” Ezell said. “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.”