Cocaine Haul Twice as Much as First Judged

The cocaine confiscated by Border Patrol agents at the San Onofre immigration checkpoint Thursday totals 477 pounds, twice as much as original estimates, authorities said Friday. That makes it the largest single seizure of the drug ever in San Diego County.

The cocaine, seized from a pickup truck attempting to pass through the Border Patrol station, has a street value of about $58 million, said Lt. Alan Fulmer, a division commander in the San Diego County Narcotics Task Force.

At an arraignment Friday in U.S. District Court in San Diego, Jose Arturo Leon-Figuero, 40, and Lucia Margarita Canales-Aparicio, 21, pleaded innocent before U.S. Magistrate Roger Curtis McKee to charges of possession and transportation of cocaine, Assistant U.S. Atty. Pat Swan said.

The defendants, who live together, are being held without bail at the Metropolitan Correctional Center pending a detention hearing Wednesday, Swan said. The U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego said it will ask a federal grand jury to issue an indictment against the couple.

Canales-Aparicio’s 3-year-old child, who was riding with the couple when the arrests occurred, has been placed in a foster home. Canales-Aparicio is an undocumented alien from El Salvador, but Leon-Figuero told authorities he is a native of Mexico residing legally in the United States.

Officials originally believed that the drugs seized at the San Onofre checkpoint weighed about 220 pounds. But they revised that estimate upward after agents counted the number of brick-sized packages of cocaine in the pickup truck’s bed. Agents said the 217 packages, covered by either plastic or masking tape, weighed slightly more than two pounds each.

“The guys that first looked at it just flat out didn’t realize those suitcases contained so much,” Fulmer said. “I don’t think anyone realized those suitcases could hold that much coke.”

Fulmer said it essentially was luck that led to the seizure. The truck was pulled over only after a Border Patrol agent grew suspicious that the pair were illegal aliens.

“We got lucky on this one,” Fulmer said. “It was pure, simple, unadulterated luck--and a little gut feeling on the part of a Border Patrol agent.”

Agents found most of the cocaine stashed inside four suitcases. A clump of about two dozen bricks was also piled in the truck bed, covered only by a blanket. The truck bed was covered with a black, snap-on tarp.

The seemingly haphazard effort to hide the cocaine prompted Fulmer to speculate that it may have been part of a strategy to confuse Border Patrol agents.

“Maybe by being so obvious they thought the Border Patrol would figure they were legal and they’d get waived right on through,” he said.

Ronald D’Ulisse, a special agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said the incident most likely reflects the brazen attitude of drug smugglers.

“The method of concealment says it all,” he said. “Whoever is behind this thinks so little of 217 kilos of cocaine that they didn’t even bother to conceal it. They figured if they lost it, they lost it. This probably doesn’t matter to them at all.”

Authorities said such seizures may become more common as cocaine traffic shifts to California and the Southwest as authorities continue to crack down on drug operations in southern Florida.

“In the months to come, we’ll probably get many similar types of operations,” Fulmer said. “The more we can catch, the better.”

The largest previous single seizure of cocaine in the San Diego area came in April, when 75 pounds of the drug was confiscated by customs agents at the San Ysidro border crossing. In all of 1985, agents seized 103 pounds of the drug at the San Ysidro crossing. The year before, they seized only 10 pounds

At the San Onofre checkpoint, the largest previous seizure was about 50 pounds, confiscated last month, authorities said.

In April, authorities seized 1.2 tons of cocaine in Tijuana with a street value of $331 million. The same month, police in Los Angeles confiscated 1,700 pounds of the drug and West Covina police seized 675 pounds.