By Lowell Cauffiel. Media: Breitbart
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter offloaded 76,140 pounds of illegal drugs valued at $473 million in Port Everglades, Florida, this week — the largest drug offload in the service branch’s history.
As part of an effort called Operation Pacific Viper, the offload by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton included approximately 61,740 pounds of cocaine and approximately 14,400 pounds of marijuana. The seized contraband was the result of 19 interdictions in international waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
The operation is part of a wider, ongoing effort ordered by President Donald Trump to combat foreign drug cartels in Latin America.
“To put this into perspective, the potential 23 million lethal doses of cocaine seized by the U.S. Coast Guard and our partners, are enough to fatally overdose the entire population of the state of Florida, underscoring the immense threat posed by transnational drug trafficking to our nation,” said Rear Adm. Adam Chamie, Coast Guard Southeast District commander.
According to a statement yesterday from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security:
This is the first major offload of Operation Pacific Viper, a historic partnership between the Coast Guard and the U.S. Navy that is surging forces to the Eastern Pacific to cut off drugs and human smuggling before they ever reach American shores. As part of this operation, the Coast Guard conducted 19 interdictions in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. They are defending the Homeland with overwhelming force.
Three Coast Guard cutters, a helicopter squadron, three tactical teams, the Navy’s USS Cole and a Royal Netherlands Navy ship were all involved in the operation.
Hamilton commanding officer Capt. John McWhite said crews in total “interdicted 11 go-fast vessels, detained 34 suspected drug traffickers” in the oceanic sweep.
Some of Hamilton‘s seizures included 8,800 pounds of cocaine from two fast vessels off the Galápagos Islands in June and, a month later, another 9,160 from a boat near Socorro Island, Mexico.
The Coast Guard reported that 80 percent of illegal-drug interdictions are made on the high seas.
That effort could be ramping up even more in coming weeks, Breitbart News reported, as the president earlier this month ordered more U.S. military involvement to combat cartels in the Caribbean and the Gulf of America.
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