Mexico City police find 1.6 tons of cocaine in two trucks in "historic" seizure

Mexico City police made one of the biggest drug busts in recent memory in the capital, stopping two freight trucks carrying about 1.6 tons of cocaine, officials said Tuesday. The head of the city government hailed the seizure as a "historic confiscation."

City police chief Omar Garcia Harfuch said the cocaine was worth about $20 million on the street in Mexico. But he said only part of the shipment had been destined for the capital, with the rest heading north to Los Angeles.

The cocaine apparently was sent to Mexico from Colombia and landed at a port on the Pacific coast of the southern state of Oaxaca, the chief said.

He said a third vehicle was escorting the two trucks, and four Colombians were arrested.

Garcia Harfuch is no stranger to the fact that major drug gangs operate in Mexico City. In 2020, some two dozen gunmen ambushed his armored vehicle before dawn on one of the capital's main boulevards. The brazen attack left him with three bullet wounds and his two bodyguards and a bystander dead.

In a statement posted to Facebook Tuesday, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, the head of government of Mexico City, called the bust "historic."

"Today the Secretary of Civil Security made a historic confiscation of 1,600 kg of cocaine," she wrote. "It's an example that in Mexico City there is no impunity or complicity."

Mexico City officials have long acknowledged that drug cartels use the capital as a shipping point, but they claim the gangs do not operate in the city as brazenly as they do in other parts of Mexico.

Earlier this month, Mexico City police engaged in a shootout with more than a dozen gunmen armed with a .50 caliber sniper rifle, grenades and a machine gun. Garcia Harfuch said that 14 suspects had been detained and that officers freed two kidnap victims who were apparently being held against their will. 

In:
• Mexico
• Cocaine