US border agents in Arizona intercepted an Xbox crammed with meth
US Customs and Border Patrol agents in Nogales, Arizona, intercepted 3 pounds of methamphetamine crammed inside an Xbox gaming system on September 15.
The agents came across the narcotics when a 16-year-old resident of Nogales attempted to transit the Morley Pedestrian crossing into the US from Sonora, Mexico.
According to a CBP release, a narcotics-detecting canine directed attention to the Xbox, and after an inspection the agents seized the drugs, which had an estimated worth of about $10,000.
The 16-year-old was arrested and turned over to Homeland Security Investigations.
Synthetic drugs like meth have become increasingly common as producers and traffickers adjust to factors like marijuana legalization and widespread heroin use in the US.
"That has shifted the marketplace in a way. It means that Mexican illicit-drug exporters have had to ... diversify their offerings," David Shirk, a professor at the University of San Diego, told Business Insider. "They have moved into ... heroin as a source of revenue, but also ... into other, I would say, synthetic drugs, like MDMA and various forms of methamphetamine."
While seizures at the border can only reveal so much about the black-market drug trade, reports from Customs and Border Patrol indicate that heroin and other synthetic drugs are frequently intercepted at the US-Mexico frontier.
On September 9, a search of a Chevy Tahoe crossing the border at Brownsville, Texas, uncovered 37 pounds of what was believed to be methamphetamine, valued at $740,000. That same day, a search of a Nissan Murano at the Laredo, Texas, border crossing turned up 12 pounds of crystal meth and 4 pounds of heroin, worth a total of nearly $360,000.
In two separate incidents on September 9 at the border crossing at Nogales, Arizona, 17 pounds of meth valued at more than $52,000 was found in the wheel well of a Dodge van, while later that day a 16-year-old woman was found to have nearly 3 pounds of heroin worth almost $48,000 in her undergarments.
On September 13 at the Nogales port of entry, a Mexican woman was found to be carrying three pounds of heroin worth $50,000 in a can of baby formula. On September 15, agents in California found more than 43 pounds of meth worth about $175,000 concealed under the floor mats of a gray 2014 Nissan Sentra.
The following morning, a vehicle search in Ocotillo, California, not far from the US-Mexico border, uncovered 33.5 pounds of fentanyl - the highly potent drug linked to the US's overdose epidemic - worth $1.5 million hidden in the car's seats.