Drug smuggling

Want to know where most drugs cross the border? Look at the Border Patrol’s news releases.

Beside a table piled high with bags of white powder, representatives from Customs and Border Protection on Thursday announced the largest seizure of fentanyl in the department’s history.

Late last month, a 26-year-old Mexican national driving a trailer full of cucumbers was stopped as he tried to enter the United States at a border checkpoint near Nogales, Ariz. The trailer contained a false bottom; beneath it, hundreds of pounds of both fentanyl and meth with a street value of more than $4.5 million, authorities said. The drugs were seized, and the driver arrested and charged with two federal charges.

All in all, a success story for the department. Notice the details, though: The drugs were hidden in a vehicle passing through a border checkpoint, not driving wildly through barren desert, thanks to the lack of a wall on the border.