About 45,000 pounds of cocaine and 3,800 pounds of marijuana were offloaded at Port Everglades on Wednesday morning, worth more than $509 million.
“This is not a drop in the bucket. Behind you is half a billion dollars of pure cocaine, uncut cocaine. So when they cut this poison with baking soda and whatever else they cut it with, it will multiply even more times than you can imagine,” said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who appeared at a Coast Guard news conference on the drug seizures with FBI Director Kash Patel.
The drugs were the result of 13 interdictions by the crews of U.S. Coast Guard cutters James and Mohawk, and officials said two cartels — Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, also known as the CJNG, and the Sinaloa Cartel – are believed to have heavy ties to the shipments.
Coast Guard seizes $6 million worth of cocaine off the coast of Broward County
Drones, aircraft and ships were used to intercept traffickers off the coast of Peru, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.
“There is no lethal force on planet Earth that is responsible for an overdose death of an American citizen in every seven minutes, more so than these foreign terrorist organizations,” said Patel, emphasizing that narco traffickers are terrorists.
Eleven people, whose identities remain classified, will be prosecuted in the Middle District of Florida.
“(Seizing these narcotics means) up to 154 lives saved directly from cocaine-related overdose deaths in this country. It means that there’s almost 11,000 less cocaine users that are going to get access to the drugs. It means that we save at least 16 and a half million dollars on costs related to inmate care and health care for people inflicted with these drugs,” said Vice Admiral Nathan Moore, commander of the U.S Coast Guard Atlantic Area.
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U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel walk past pallets of shrink-wrapped narcotics and a drone as they arrive for a Wednesday news conference at Port Everglades. More than $509 million in illegal narcotics weighing more than 48,400 pounds were offloaded by the U.S. Coast Guard in Fort Lauderdale after multiple interdictions. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)
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U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel walk past pallets of shrink-wrapped narcotics and a drone as they arrive for a Wednesday news conference at Port Everglades. More than $509 million in illegal narcotics weighing more than 48,400 pounds were offloaded by the U.S. Coast Guard in Fort Lauderdale after multiple interdictions. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Since February, Coast Guard cutters James, Stone, Waesche and Mohawk have yielded over 59 metric tons of seized narcotics, stopping $1.5 billion in revenue to cartels, according to Moore.
“We are going to dismantle the next-man-up theory that has been breeding in these Mexican cartels for generations,” Patel said.
The cutter James, which was visible in the background of the news conference, intercepted 11 drug smuggling vessels in 56 days, apprehending 34 narcotics traffickers while patrolling an area of the Pacific Ocean equivalent in size to the continental United States.
“Our message to the cartel is simple. We own the sea. You do not. We will find you. We will hunt you down. We will stop you before you reach our border, before you can smuggle these drugs into our country,” Moore said.
Bondi was also in South Florida last Friday to announce that nine MS-13 gang members had been convicted in cold-case murders in Broward and Palm Beach counties, and an additional three indictments had been made.
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