Agents Seize Ton of Cocaine at Houston Port

Customs agents sawed open two 12-foot steel cylinders at a Port of Houston warehouse Friday and found more than a ton of cocaine with an estimated street value of $100 million.

The cocaine, crammed into two hollow steel rollers used to press pulp into paper, was seized from a Colombian-registered ship that arrived at a dock in Houston.

Agents called it one of the biggest cocaine seizures in the nation this year. No arrests were made, and none are expected.

“It really didn’t have anything to do with the vessel,” said Candace Vice, director for trade compliance for customs in Houston. “We have no way to tie it to any particular person.”

The Colombian ship, a frequent vessel on the regular Colombia-to-Houston route, was headed back after delivering its legal cargo of auto parts and fluorescent light bulbs.

The rollers had been sent from a paper manufacturing company in Colombia for shipment to Tampico, Mexico. They were to have been transferred to another vessel headed for Tampico.

Vice said the cocaine, neatly bundled in more than 1,000 bricks weighing 2 1/2 pounds each, probably would have been smuggled back into the United States via land routes from Mexico.

The nation’s largest drug seizure this year was on Aug. 1, when customs agents in Miami found more than 3 tons of cocaine in duffel bags hidden in shipping containers of coffee beans.