Border Patrol agents find 146 pounds of cocaine hidden in ice cream maker
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents found 146 pounds of cocaine hidden in an ice cream maker, officials announced on Thursday.
Agents stopped a 1995 Ford F-150 pickup truck headed to the U.S. from Mexico at the Bridge of the Americas cargo facility on June 19, officials said in a news release. After taking an X-ray of the vehicle, a customs dog smelled a commercial ice cream maker in the truck's bed and alerted agents about the equipment. Officials found 56 bundles of cocaine in the ice cream maker, the news release said.
The driver, a 43-year-old Mexican man, was turned over to Texas law enforcement, officials said.
The acting El Paso Port Director Luis Mejia said, "Seizures like this remind us all that drugs can be concealed almost anywhere."
In recent months, drug traffickers have attempted to conceal narcotics in unusual containers to evade detection. In June, an anti-drug unit in Uruguay found cocaine hidden in surfboards bound from South America to Europe. A total of 90 pounds of cocaine was found in five of the boards.
In May, Italian police found three tons of cocaine hidden in a banana shipment. Stacked in refrigerated silver containers, the 78 tons of bananas hiding the cocaine were coming from Ecuador and being shipped to Armenia, according to Italian officials.
The same week, South Carolina law enforcement found cocaine behind "what they thought was a pregnant woman's belly." The woman ran when officials questioned her and drugs fell from her fake rubber stomach.
Reporting contributed by Li Cohen.