March 22 (UPI) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection said officers based in Jacksonville, Fla., discovered two ships carrying nearly 3,000 pounds of cocaine in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
In a statement, the agency said the Air and Marine Operations aircrews aboard a P-3 aircraft detected two suspicious go-fast style boats “engaging in transnational narcotics trafficking.” The crew then passed off surveillance efforts to a Miami-based DHC-8 aircraft crew who continued to track the boats.
Through the Joint Interagency Task Force: South, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard, which intercepted the boats and arrested three people.
“This latest seizure provides a glimpse of the vigilance our experienced aircrews exhibit when patrolling the open waters,” Robert Blanchard, the director of National Air Security Operations Center in Jacksonville, said in a statement. “Our crews remain committed to disrupting transnational criminal organizations’ attempts to smuggle illicit narcotics.”
Air and Marine Operations patrols a 42-million-square-mile area of the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean in search of drugs that are headed to the United States, including on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the isthmus of Central America.
In 2016, Air and Marine Operations P-3 aircrews based in Jacksonville and Corpus Christi, Texas, contributed to 145 drug seizures and disruptions in which about 34,000 pounds of marijuana and 193,000 pounds of cocaine were seized, the agency said.
