The Mexican truck driver arrested in Nogales and charged with smuggling the largest load of fentanyl ever seized at a U.S. port of entry said he was unaware he was transporting drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border, according to court records.

If true, that would not be at all unusual, according to produce-industry leaders in southern Arizona, who say drug smugglers look for opportunities to exploit companies transporting goods across the border.

Juan Antonio Torres Barraza, 26, faces two counts of possession with intent to distribute, stemming from his Jan. 26 arrest.

Customs officers at the Mariposa commercial crossing uncovered 94 packages of fentanyl weighing an estimated 254 pounds, and 322 packages of methamphetamine weighing about 395 pounds. 

The drugs were hidden inside a shipment of cucumbers.

According to the criminal complaint filed in federal court in Tucson, Torres Barraza told officers after his arrest that the trailer carrying the cucumbers was not his and that he would be paid about $37 to deliver them across the border. 

Torres Barraza’s boss, he said, had sent him to pick it up from a company called Logistic TEO in Nogales, Sonora at about 9:30 a.m.

“Torres said he took the trailer from a well-dressed man he did not know and hooked it up to the tractor,” the complaint says. “Torres said he did not feel anything was out of the ordinary and that this occasion was the first time he has crossed a Logistic TEO truck.”

His destination in Arizona was the C.H. Rivas warehouse in Rio Rico. Once the shipment was delivered, he was told to return to Mexico, where he would be paid about $37 for the trip, according to the documents. 

However, C.H. Rivas said it was unaware that the cucumber shipment seized on Jan. 26 was headed its way, adding that customs officers would usually notify the company when a truck headed to their warehouse was busted with drugs. That way, the produce could be retrieved. That didn’t happen this time.

Michael Humphries, the area port director for Nogales, said customs officers destroyed the shipment of cucumbers after seizing it because of the potential risk that the cucumbers could have been tainted by the fentanyl.

The narcotic is about 80 times to 100 times stronger than morphine. The seizure contained enough fentanyl to kill about 115 million people, investigators said.

Drug smugglers ‘use any means’

Guillermo Valencia, a customs broker and the chairman of the Greater Nogales-Santa Cruz County Port Authority, said that because the transportation chain is interrupted at the border, it’s possible that smugglers could plant drugs without one of the parties being aware.

When U.S.-bound goods arrive at the border, they are usually dropped off with transportation companies on the Mexican side. Those companies hire truck drivers to haul the goods to warehouses on the U.S. side. From there they are distributed throughout the United States.

“The big thing is that these drug-smuggling organizations will use any means at their disposal to smuggle drugs, and they will use the path of least resistance,” Valencia said.

Many of the legitimate companies in the Nogales area have invested in resources and processes to stem drug smuggling, he added. The legitimate companies also interact and communicate.

But this case has been different.

“We’ve been trying to find out who it was. Everybody’s been asking around, ‘Who are they?’ Nobody seems to know who it was,” Valencia said of the company, adding that he suspects drug groups sometimes set up their own transportation methods.

“That’s not surprising,” he said. “They do it that way to fly under the radar.”

Valencia praised Customs and Border Protection officers for the fentanyl bust. He said it shows the system put in place to stop drugs is working but also highlights the need to invest in the ports of entry.

Officers at Mariposa scanned the trailer Torres Barraza was driving during a secondary inspection. The scan showed “anomalies under the floor of the tractor, specifically between the end of the trailer and the last set of wheels,” the complaint read. 

A canine officer then detected a smell emanating from the area, which led to the historic drug haul with an estimated value of $4.6 million, CBP said.

To date, Torres Barraza remains the only arrest in the case, according to a spokesperson for Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona. But the investigation is ongoing.

Torres Barraza remains in federal custody pending the start of his trial in Tucson federal court. 

Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2019/02/04/fentanyl-bust-truck-driver-historic-seizure-us-mexico-border-port-of-entry/2770914002/