Sensors Snare Truck Filled With Cocaine as It Crosses Border

In what is believed to be the largest cocaine seizure ever made in San Diego County, U.S. Border Patrol agents here confiscated 1,285 pounds of the drug after stopping a pickup truck that had crossed the border in a remote area near Jacumba.

The cocaine--with an estimated street value of $57 million--was discovered in one of two pickup trucks that triggered electronic sensors placed along the Mexican border to detect the entry of illegal aliens.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested the drivers of both vehicles in connection with the alleged smuggling attempt. The cache of cocaine seized Monday was almost three times larger than the county’s previous record cocaine bust, 477 pounds confiscated Aug. 7 at the San Onofre Border Patrol checkpoint.

“This is a major seizure, there’s no doubt about it; whether it will make a dent in the cocaine market remains to be seen,” said Richard Slattery, assistant special agent with the DEA’s San Diego office. “I wouldn’t rate this as a fly-by-night operation. This is a very well-organized operation. This is a lot of cocaine.”

When the first vehicle tripped the sensors, it alerted agents at the Border Patrol’s San Ysidro office, who radioed a patrol car near the point where the four-wheel-drive truck was crossing the desert, said Alan E. Eliason, chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector. The area where the truck entered “is notorious for vehicle drive-throughs” to smuggle illegal aliens into the country, he said.

The first truck was believed to be a scout for the vehicle containing the cocaine, Eliason said. While Border Patrol agents were arresting the driver of the first truck, Manuel de Jesus Zazueta-Beltran, on suspicion of being an illegal alien, sensors detected a second vehicle crossing the border, Eliason said.

The driver of the second truck, identified as Noel Armando Aispuro of Rosemead, was extremely nervous after being pulled over by Border Patrol agents, Eliason said. The agents reported that Aispuro’s hands were shaking so much that he had difficulty removing his driver’s license from his wallet.

When the agents asked Aispuro what he was carrying in his truck, he said it was empty, Eliason said. The agents searched the vehicle and found hundreds of one-kilogram bags of cocaine in the truck’s side compartments.

“It really wasn’t hidden,” Slattery said. “There was no attempt made to secret it in any way. . . . It was very brazen that they would take this kind of a chance with this kind of load. The brazenness of this gives you an indication of how widespread (cocaine smuggling) is.”

Slattery said the other remarkable aspect was that both men were unarmed and there was no attempt by either man to resist arrest. Both trucks are registered to Aispuro, Slattery said. The DEA is only beginning its investigation of whether a major smuggling ring was involved in the operation, though Slattery said he does not think the men were merely employees of a drug network.

“I think it’s more than a couple of runners,” he said, adding that he did not believe “that a load this size could be trusted to two runners without somebody there keeping an eye on things.”

The cocaine, believed to be of very high purity, was probably on its way to a distribution center in Los Angeles, where it would be cut with other substances for street sale, Slattery said.

“I doubt very much that it was intended for San Diego County,” Slattery said. “We have a problem, but not that big.”

Eliason said that Monday’s seizure could herald a shift in drug-trafficking tactics, prompted in part by the DEA’s improved success in stopping smugglers who try to bring in drugs by boat or plane.

“What’s significant to us is the size of this load coming across the border through the fence,” Eliason said. “This says to us that there is an increased attempt to transport cocaine across the land border.”