Another metric would be the amount of — and it mostly comes through ports of entry, which is another discussion that we can certainly have here, but the amount of drugs that come through,” Kelly said.
Shortly after Trump was inaugurated, the CBP’s Paul A. Beeson offered similar testimony.
“The Southwest land border POEs are the major points of entry for illegal drugs, where smugglers use a wide variety of tactics and techniques for concealing drugs,” Beeson said, referring to ports of entry.
That is bolstered by the CBP’s own news releases. We reviewed every news release touting a drug seizure since Nov. 1, 2018. Of the 120 seizures included in those releases, 82 occurred at ports of entry. Another 14 occurred at or near immigration checkpoints like the one near Yuma listed above.
The rest, 24 of them, happened between ports of entry. Almost all of those shared similar characteristics: They were seizures of marijuana by agents in the CBP’s Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas. Usually, the seizure involved agents spotting people carrying bundles of marijuana across the river into the United States who then dropped the packages and fled south upon being confronted.
There was one noteworthy exception. On Dec. 6, agents spotted an ultralight aircraft flying across the border into California. They watched as it descended in altitude, later finding that it had dropped 129 pounds of meth near Calexico. The drugs were seized.