02x14 - Mega Millions Meth Stash

[bunniefuu]

Next.

What are you doing in Mexico?

OFFICER: Okay.

Yeah, yeah, looks good, looks good.

You have a good day, ma'am. Take care.

ROSE: Hello, ma'am.

There's been a lot
of female body carriers.

That has been a trend.
Fentanyl to heroin.

Let me just check real quick.

I'm typically looking
for a person's behavior.

Is the person nervous?

GRANILLO: We've been catching
a lot more frequently.

The trend is that it's a group of people.

At least two or three people
and they're all body carrying.

Where are you ladies going today?

OFFICER: Okay, quick question.
So this is your daughter?

Yeah? You must be very proud of her.

Are you planning to go to college?

Not really? Gotcha.

GRANILLO: I've seen the mother before.

And she usually gets referred to secondary
for further inspection.

So it's your first time crossing over?

You have birth certificates or anything?

Okay, but you have a Social?

Let me see? Thank you.

She has never crossed with anybody,
she always crosses alone.

That was kind of an eye-opener for me.

Okay. Thank you.

[GRANILLO SPEAKING]

Harry is trained to detect the presence
and odor of narcotics.

Methamphetamines, ecstasy, heroine,
cocaine, fentanyl, marijuana.

- Have you smoked marijuana?
- [WOMAN SPEAKING]

- Have you used any drugs?
- [WOMAN SPEAKING]

Is something on you
or inside your cavities?

I'll need you to slide forward.

Both arms straight up to the sky.
Do not move, okay?

K9's one of our best tools.

For a human, we smell a hamburger,

and they smell the lettuce,
they smell the bun, the sesame seeds,

the mustard, tomato, etcetera.

K9 did not alert to the daughter.

Have a seat right in the middle
of that bench, okay?

Any drugs or anything ill*gal
on your person?

Both arms straight up to the sky.

Do not move, okay?

Go ahead, stand up.

You sure you got nothing on you?

[GRANILLO SPEAKING]

[WOMAN SPEAKING]

ROSE: Our K9 will
only hit on narcotics.

They're not gonna hit
on somebody's bodily fluids.

GRANILLO: She became real defensive,

which is a common tactic
that they try to use to distract you.

[OFFICER SPEAKING]

The body carriers were getting good at it,
they're hiding them everywhere.

That's what the main concern is,
when you find out they do have something

but you wanna make sure
that their safety is a priority

and that they're gonna be okay in the end.

ROSE: The number one thing
is we wanna get it out of them.

Any point in time, the package can snap,
we've seen it happen.

Especially with fentanyl, one small drop

that may get on the body
can lead to a overdose.

[FEMALE OFFICER SPEAKING]

GRANILLO: There was nothing.

She had smoked marijuana
earlier in the day,

so the K9 was possibly alerting to that.

It's important to screen everybody because
you never know what they have.

You thought, "She doesn't have anything

"and she's saying that,
so I'll let her go."

No, you have to really be confident

you're letting her into United States
knowing she doesn't have anything.

OFFICER DAVE: We'll probably need to look
at that a little more in-depth.

We received a package which was

an air conditioning unit
from a shipping company...

that originated in Mexico,
came to the United States.

They felt like something was wrong

so they went ahead
and did a scan of the package

and saw some anomalies inside of it.

So from that point, they went ahead
and contacted HSI in Atlanta,

which was the actual destination
for the package.

And what we're about to do
is get the compressor out

and go ahead and test it.

There you go.

So maybe slide it in there?

There we go.

We can get to just testing that.

So right now we're gonna probe
into the compressor.

- I mean, I can get in like this.
- MALE OFFICER: Yeah, that's what I mean.

OFFICER DAVE:
But as far as pulling anything out...

Let me see if I can
just break some of it up.

A clear, crystalline substance.

See if we can get a positive reaction
with this test kit.

There you go.

So this is positive for methamphetamine.

Looks like this cap right here
had been removed.

That's probably how they inserted
the drugs into the compressor.

They'll use compressors all the time
to store the drugs or the money in these

so the dogs don't hit on 'em because
they're true metal. They can't smell it.

There's two kilos of methamphetamine
concealed within this.

Yeah, see?

- Like that?
- Yeah.

We're reinstalling the compressor
into the air conditioning unit,

and we're doing that for the purpose
of doing a controlled delivery

in hopes of taking the people in custody

that are actually having this shipped
from the south west border.

Laredo has four bridges
crossing from the Mexican side.

World Trade's strictly 100%
only commercial merchandise.

There's just trucks.

There's nothing small about it.

Not the trucks, not the loads.

The quantity of narcotics that are being
stopped at that point is tremendous.

Open up one of these boxes,
make sure these products look good.

This is a major drug corner

'cause the town north of us
is San Antonio, Texas.

Then after that,
it connects all over the US.

Clear.

So it's important that we stop it here
before it actually hits the US.

[MAN SPEAKING]

Its manifest says auto parts.

So they sent this one
from the primary lanes

because these are the type of merchandise
that are known to bring in narcotics.

When there's something in there,
we're gonna have to go and get it.

- I'm gonna go check that in there.
- Okay.

Yeah, it was that one. It was that one.

The middle one, right? The middle?

Cut a few pieces of the cardboard.

A thin sheet of narcotics,
that's all they need.

You know, put it inside the cardboard.

The places they can hide it is endless.

It's good to go.

The dog did show interest on this one,
could have been anything.

But we checked it,
we verified that it's good to go.

We'll call the next batch,
and so on, and so on, and so on.

What were you doing in Mexico?

Anything in your pockets?

- You're good to go.
- Perfect.

OFFICER: Hi, how are you doing today?
WOMAN: Fine, and you?

Where are you going today?

To the bank?

[BOTH SPEAKING SPANISH]

Okay.

GRANILLO: The trend in body carriers
as I see, it's more women.

From the stories
that body carriers have told me,

it's easier for them to...
One of them becomes a carrier,

then they talk their friends into it.

[OFFICER SPEAKING]

Next.

Hi.

How are you? Good.

Documents?

You lost them?

Did you lose them in Mexico?

Yeah? Okay.

Let's start with your photo.

Take your mask off for me.

And what were you doing in Mexico?

You live there? Okay.
And do you work?

What do you do for work?

You sell stuff online? Okay.

[GRANILLO SPEAKING]

[GRANILLO SPEAKING]

All right, you're gonna
come with me, grab your bag.

You're gonna put everything up here.

Empty all your pockets for me.

Any drugs? Weapons?

No?

Okay, just have a seat,
we'll be right with you.

If somebody is crossing with no ID
or hardly any proof of citizenship,

low income, that's some good indicators
for a referral to secondary.

A lot of people body carrying
sometimes think,

"Well, if I don't have an ID,

"they can't know my real name
or look me up,"

but there are other ways to find out
the person's true identity.

There you go, perfect.

Do you smoke marijuana?

Did you smoke today?

All right, did you smoke
wearing the same clothes?

Do you use any other type of drug?

- Yes.
- What do you use?

So meth and marijuana?

And you used meth earlier as well?

Okay. Nothing on your person?

Okay.

Drug use won't indicate
that they're already body carrying,

but it does give you
a little higher level of suspicion.

Arms straight up. Do not move, okay?

Here. Come on.

A lot of times, they'll go to Mexico,
they'll get a package for the body carry

and they get paid
in smaller amounts of drugs,

so their payment is for their own use
of whatever they're bringing across.

Separate your feet.

It's also because they might want money
to be buying more drugs over here,

they think, "I need quick payment,
I'm gonna go bring a package across."

Move your arms up, there you go.

All right, come on out.

You can grab your jacket.

GRANILLO: It was negative,
she had no anomalies in her body,

nothing that we found that
raised our awareness,

so she was able
to be down the road on her way.

We got a controlled delivery.
Package arrived from Mexico.

It's got meth inside.
Pretty big air conditioning unit.

We got a van already on-site
and everything.

So we got the location under surveillance.

I don't know too much
about the people in there.

There's a couple of cars in the driveway.

We'll send the UC in to deliver the box.

Once it's inside, we'll just sit back

and we'll monitor what transpires
at the residence.

And at that point, we can make entry
and everything.

Any questions?

Methamphetamine predominantly
comes from Mexico.

We are a hub for the United States.

So pretty much everything
comes through Atlanta

before it gets outsourced to, say,
Chicago, North Carolina and New York,

East Coast, anywhere around there.

So since COVID hit,
they kind of shut down the border,

so the amount of drugs that are coming
through the mail is ridiculous.

And you know, meth, heroin, cocaine,

they're k*lling our kids, they're k*lling
adults and ruining lives.

By taking drugs off the street,
we feel like we're saving lives.

Yeah, I see it right now.

[AGENT SPEAKING ON PHONE]

All right, bro.

So we're in position
with a view of the house.

I mean, it just looks like a typical
single-family residence.

The windows are blacked out.

So you can't see nothing.

The upper windows, I don't even know
if they have blinds on 'em

or if they have black plastic
or something over the windows.

So hopefully everybody else will
get set up here in just a few minutes,

and we'll send in the package.

Let him go ahead and deliver it
and then see where we go from there.

Okay. All right, yep,
I see him coming out now.

UC is at the steps,
walking up to the door.

But nobody's coming to the door.

No contact at the door.

Here comes a car.

Turning into the driveway right now.

[AGENT ON RADIO]

Female is out.

I can see the male in there.

[AGENT ON RADIO]

Here comes a car.

[AGENT ON RADIO]

UC still on the porch.

Female is out.

Female is signing for it.

[AGENT OVER RADIO]

Male went in through the garage door.

So with the package inside the house,

we don't want to just
rush in there 'cause we're kind of hoping

they cut into the compressor
and pull the drugs out.

So right now,
we're just in a waiting game.

Nothing on you to declare today?

- Thank you, sir. Have a great day.
- You, too.

What are you bringing with you
from Mexico?

Beer? Gonna have a party?

I got you, St. Patrick's Day.
So, like that.

Presently we're finding a lot more
body carries in vehicles.

Pre-COVID, we found a lot of car loads.

Now that we started catching on
to the smuggler's tactics,

they moved on
to something a little harder,

which is body carries inside vehicles.

Hello. How you doing, ma'am?

You cross often, ma'am?

[WOMAN SPEAKING]

Okay.

Hold on, ma'am.

[WOMAN SPEAKING]

The female driver, she's nervous
and she crosses frequently.

Okay, ma'am, this way.

So I send her to secondary
for secondary inspection.

You smoke?

What do you smoke?

Right now? Are you sure?

She did say she smoked marijuana,

and I kind of smelled it
when she opened up the car.

How long were you in Mexico for?

Tuesday? That's it?
How long you been living down here?

You still have
an Alabama driver's licence?

I got you.

She has an Alabama driver's license.
So what are you doing down here?

How did you meet your boyfriend,
what was he doing in Alabama?

Are you bringing
anything with you from Mexico?

You bringing any drugs from Mexico?
Medicine from Mexico?

She checked a lot of our boxes
in what we were looking for.

Hey, follow me real quick.

So we're just going to kind of deep dive
and see what else we can find.

Just take a seat, all right?

[BOTH SPEAKING SPANISH]

Go over to the next window.

One of the biggest things that I look for

is how new the trailer is.

The crossings, how often do they cross.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

I also focus a lot on the companies
transporting the actual commodity.

So I've been running some queries

and looking into the commodity
he's bringing across,

it shows that it's coming from a city

in Mexico that's known
for its cartel activities,

and it's going out of state

to another city that's known really big
for its trafficking of narcotics.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

Is it that one?

[OFFICER SPEAKING]

Primary officer told us
that he selected one to look further into.

It's manifested as acrylic
waterproof paint going to Georgia.

It's probably more than


See what it looks like.

We have a X-ray van that we can
individually scan these buckets

to see if there's some kind
of narcotics bundle inside.

Help me check them on that side?

Check these two out.

All right, there goes one.

So you can't really tell
too much of a difference.

It just looks dense on the inside.

So far, this shipment looks pretty legit.

But being the fact that it is buckets

and there has been previous seizures
of narcotics in buckets.

There you go.

The next step would be to physically
open up these buckets

and check out what's inside.

Could be anything.

Ready?

No, it has paint.

Next one.

Right, so as I picked up this one,

I noticed this one was lighter
than the others and they shouldn't be.

They should weigh the same.

That's definitely not acrylic paint,
I'll tell you that.

That's definitely not acrylic paint,
I'll tell you that.

You guys see that?

So those are going to be the ones
that actually have that acrylic paint.

We opened up the buckets
and we noticed that some of them

have a white color and some
of them have a clear liquid.

But can it be water or something else?
Yeah, maybe, right.

So let me get a test kit right now.

So you break each one of these ampoules,
there's three of them.

From left to right.

And after you break the last one,
you should have the reaction.

And there it is.
You see the blue right there?

It's letting you know that it's positive
for the properties of methamphetamines.

Told you.

These are five-gallon buckets, right?

So these guys, what they'll do,

they'll put one or two buckets
in the whole pallet.

One or two buckets,
that's all they really need to get across.

We're going to check all of them.

Make sure which ones have acrylics
and which have narcotics.

So we're going to have to
physically open each bucket.

There's about, what? About 24 pallets.

So, yeah.

[OFFICER SPEAKING]

So we're looking like
a long night ahead of us.

OFFICER: 1-11, Lane 5.

GARCIA: I have a female driver that
presented an Alabama driver's license.

She said she currently resides in Tucson
and she comes down weekly

to see her boyfriend that got deported.

Which one? This one?

That driver's license was recently issued
so that raised a lot of questions.

I also smelled some marijuana.

Marijuana is newly legal in most states,
including Arizona.

However, it is still ill*gal federally,

so you still cannot bring any marijuana,
marijuana products

through the international border.

I'm going to go do the seven.

The next step is for me to call K-9
and see what the canine can detect,

if it can pinpoint something.

I'm going to go and search her,
I'm going to pat her down,

make sure she doesn't
have anything on her.

Just follow me real quick.

Done this before?

Once a week they pat you down?

We're going to make sure you don't have
anything you're not supposed to,

and then we'll get you on your way, okay?

All right, please go ahead
and sit real quick.

There was nothing derogatory
that we can find on her,

within her, anything like that.

We're good. Just make sure
you close everything.

However, it was still a good stop,
to take a closer look at her,

especially because
she checks so many boxes.

That's part of our job.
The only way we find things is if we try.

Even though she didn't have anything,

maybe the next person,
we'll end up finding something.

So just a few minutes ago, we observed

they were eager and excited
the package actually arrived.

[AGENT OVER RADIO]

He did look up the street.

Okay, he has a yellow and black bag,
almost like a tool bag.

So that could be an indicator
that he's actually

going to break into the air conditioner
and try to retrieve the product.

[AGENT OVER RADIO]

Copy.

[OFFICER SPEAKING]

Ma'am, come on.

Come on, come down.

Turn around and put your hands
behind your back.

They could see two subjects
running back and forth.

Finally, the female came down.

Sit down.

She was frantic, yelling.

I'm going to move him over here.

Sit, sit.

So the bag of meth they found,
that's probably not from,

that's something extra.

[OFFICER SPEAKING]

From the air conditioner? Okay.

It is?

They took photos,
went ahead and searched the house.

It's still intact.

But everything else was stripped off.

They were just two screws away
from getting it out.

The black and yellow bag that I actually
observed coming out of the target vehicle,

that bag is sitting
right next to the AC unit.

It's looking like that may
have been the actual tool bag

that they brought out
to undo the air conditioner.

A female appeared,
and we were able to detain her.

We knew there was still a male
in the house, we were searching.

We worked our way down here,
in his bedroom here.

And there was a male,
hiding in the closet with a trash bag.

Like next to, in fact, covering him.

This is the shelf that that substance
that appeared to be methamphetamine

- was just sitting out in the open?
- Yeah.

And then amongst the clothing
is where we found the box

that contained
the large quantity of pills.

We found a batch of pills
that are unknown at this time.

I mean, it could be anything,
from OxyContin, Xanax, Fentanyl pills.

We don't know yet. We're just going
to have them tested at a later date,

and find out exactly what it is.

So we found an additional amount
of methamphetamine.

All that's coming in from Mexico
into the United States.

It's a success for us because
we're taking this stuff off the streets,

and we feel like we're saving lives

because somebody could OD
on some of this stuff.

But we just press on.

Is the supervisor in there?

Copy, sir.

This is her stuff.

[MALE OFFICER SPEAKING]

This afternoon, a female
came through the port of entry

here at DeConcini,

and a primary officer
noticed discrepancies in her travel.

Got sent for a secondary inspection.

She couldn't elaborate on her details,
how long she was down there for,

why she was down there.

We did a pat down of the traveler,

and we located some narcotics
inside of her person.

We've taken the package
over to our testing area.

What we're going to do is
we're going to do a quick rapid test.

Bring it back to our solution.

I'm just going to keep it in here
and stir for a minute.

Here we go.

Here we go.

It's faint but it's getting stronger.

You'll see the single strip
of a pink line?

That indicates positive for Fentanyl.

We got some more drugs off the street.

A lot of these travelers don't realize,

putting drugs inside their body
puts them in harm's way.

They could end up at a hospital,
they may not make it across the border.

We're going to go ahead
and seal these off,

place them into our vault.

In the meantime,
we're waiting for the HSI agent

to arrive on scene,
speak with the traveler.

Okay?

The controlled delivery
that we've conducted today is over.

We're wrapping everything up in the house.
The evidence has been moved.

Inside this room is a shrine.

Got a statue of Jesús Malverde.

Jesús Malverde is a Robin Hood-like figure

that may or may not have existed
in the Sinaloa area of Mexico

back in the 1800s.

He's considered a patron saint
for the narco traffickers.

I've learned that Jesús Malverde's
popularity has risen in response

to the poverty and the violence
against the Mexican people

and everything else
that they have been experiencing.

They have offerings, basically.

So they do alcohol,
they always have a candle lit,

they provide some cash.

There's a bag of marijuana
sitting on top of his head.

There's an additional shrine
that's in the closet

that got a chicken with its head cut off.

We don't usually move stuff
from these shrines

because it's bad luck.

So Santa Muerte means Saint Death.

It's usually a female in a skeleton form
that people pray to.

They believe that if
they're living a dangerous life

and they pray to Santa Muerte
that it's going to be protecting them.

Every place we go in
that has a shrine like this,

they always have something different.

They have a scale here, sitting on top
of some boxes in this garage.

With the scales, they're used
to weigh out the product.

When somebody's coming to buy it,
they'll weigh it

and show them exactly how much they have.

But that's sitting in plain view.

They package the stuff up for sale.

Looks like it's a shop.
They got a cash register,

with quite a bit of money in there.

You want to bring her down to me?

I've never seen a storefront like this

where actual customers
will come into the house.

So this was very odd.

Come on.

What everyone needs to remember
is that addiction is a big problem

and it fuels the drug trade.

It's just meeting the demand
of the users in this area.

So until the demand goes down,
the supply won't go down.

We'll check all these buckets.
So we'll drill a hole in each one.

So we found a faster way to do it.
So the acrylic comes out like on these.

We'll know those don't have any narcotics.

These that we checked a while ago,
that we opened up,

they do have narcotics,
so we'll set them on this side.

Homeland Security special agents,

they're interviewing the driver
at a waiting area right now.

The driver, half the time,
doesn't know about the shipment

having anything ill*gal.

We're used to seeing crystal meth.

In crystals or in powder.

It's pretty rare to see it in liquid form.

Their goal is always to get it across

so they're always going
to utilize different methods.

It's always changing,
the trends are always changing.

That one's ready to be taken over there.

So all the ones that didn't
have any narcotics

will be put back on the pallets,
shrink-wrapped.

They'll be put back in a trailer
pending destruction.

How many buckets were they?
Do you guys know?

They had a final weight
of 560 kilograms...

...with an estimated street value
of $24 million.

Yeah, it's a significant seizure.

[CHUCKLES]

Team work, team effort. That's what
we're here for, finding narcotics.

So when we find narcotics,
it's like, "Hey, we did our job."

This will be turned over to HSI,

and they will continue the investigation
and see if they can get any more arrests.