A shipping manifest indicates that the container contains dried fruit. Inside, there were 3,200 pounds of cocaine.



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Authorities were conducting a routine inspection aboard the M.S.C. Carlotta, last month, when a used teal teal container caught their attention: the pins that held the container doors seemed to have been falsified.

The Carlotta, a container ship, had just arrived in Newark, coming from Buenaventura, Colombia, and the teal container was supposed to contain dried fruit. Instead, the officers opened the doors to find something that stunned even the most experienced customs officers: 60 packets of tightly wrapped white powder, each the size of a small chest.

The packages revealed to be 3,200 pounds of cocaine, the largest drug shipment intercepted in Port Newark in a quarter of a century, a bonus of $ 77 million worth on the street, authorities said Monday.

The discovery of the cargo has highlighted the fact that legal ports of entry remain the main means of illicit drug trafficking, even though President Trump has claimed that drugs are running on insecure sections of the southern border. to justify the construction of a barrier.

The February 28 seizure also suggested that the cocaine market was reborn, authorities said after several years in which heroin and fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid, dominated the drug landscape. illicit in New York.

Ray Donovan, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in New York, said the dealers had started to associate fentanyl with cocaine, creating a new deadly product. He added that the cargo of giant cocaine was a sign that the traffickers were pushing for "to create a new customer base mixing cocaine and fentanyl".

"This record seizure draws attention to this new threat and demonstrates the concerted efforts of law enforcement to seize illicit drugs before they fall on the street and into the hands of users," he said. declared.

Investigators from the Department of Homeland Security tried to determine where the drugs came from and how they ended up in Newark. Authorities said Monday that no arrests had been made.

This operation included customs and border protection officers, the D.E.A. and the New York Police Department. The port of Newark is one of the largest in the country and is a hub for illicit drugs from China and Mexico destined for the United States.

Cocaine has given way to opioids like heroin and fentanyl in recent years, officials said. Heroin is often cut with fentanyl to make it more potent, a trend that has resulted in an increase in the number of overdose deaths.

In recent months, however, the same tactics have been used to reduce and increase the city's supply of cocaine. This has sufficiently worried the authorities that Mr. Donovan Last year, a public alert was sent to residents and tourists to announce that fentanyl could be supplied with cocaine in New York.

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