Border Patrol Seizes $10 Million Worth of Meth, Cocaine in San Diego
A commercial tractor-trailer driver was caught transporting more than $10 million worth of narcotics into the U.S. from the southern border, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials said Thursday.
The 28-year-old driver was intercepted Wednesday morning at Otay Mesa Cargo Facility in San Diego, California, where CBP officers pulled hundreds of “suspicious packages” from “vats of jalapeno paste” from the truck, a press release stated.
The unnamed driver, whom officials say is a valid border-crossing card holder, was screened by a CBP K-9 unit that alerted officers to examine the trailer more closely.
Upon further examination, the contents of the packages were identified as 3,161.43 pounds of methamphetamine and 522.50 pounds of cocaine.
In total, 332 packages of methamphetamine and cocaine weighing 3,684 pounds were seized from the shipment.
CBP estimates the street value of the drugs as $10,430,000.
The tractor-trailer was seized, and the driver was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations for further processing, officials said.
“Our K-9 teams are an invaluable component of our counter-narcotics operations, providing a reliable and unequaled mobile detection capability,” said Rosa Hernandez, director of Otay Mesa Port.
“By implementing local operations under Operation Apollo and CBP’s Strategy to Combat Fentanyl and other Synthetic Drugs, we will continue to secure communities and stifle the growth of transnational criminal organizations, one seizure after another,” she added.
In November, the San Diego CBP Field Office seized more than 14,000 pounds of narcotics while conducting security operations at California’s land ports of entry, the agency said.
LOS ANGELES HAS THE LARGEST NUMBER OF HOMELESS LEGALS AND THE LARGEST NUMBER OF ILLEGALS. NOT HARD TO DO THE MATH ON THAT ONE!
California Homeless Population Up 6% in 2023
California's homeless population grew by 5.8 percent to 181,399 this year. This increase, reported in the federal government's latest count, comes as the state spends billions on the crisis, including more than $1 billion this year on housing and prevention programs.
Of California's 181,399 homeless, nearly 70 percent sleep outside—marking the highest unsheltered rate of all states, including those with mild climates such as Hawaii, Arizona, and Nevada. In California, more than 123,000 lack shelter on a given night, according to a Friday report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
These numbers showcase California's worsening homelessness crisis after the State Legislature this year earmarked $1.1 billion for homelessness housing and prevention programs as well as $400 million to clear encampments. Tens of millions of additional dollars went to dealing with veteran and youth homelessness. From 2018 to 2021, the state poured $10 billion into nonprofits and programs that were supposed to mitigate the problem.
The report also contrasts with California governor Gavin Newsom's (D.) optimistic assertions on homelessness last month as he debated Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.). In one exchange, Newsom said he was the "first governor in California history to take this head on."
"We are investing unprecedented resources, more accountability," Newsom said. "We've gotten 68,000 people off the streets; close to 6,000 encampments we've gotten off the streets."
The governor's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Since 2007, California has seen a more than 40 percent increase in its homeless population, the HUD analysis said.
California's major cities are struggling to make headway on the problem. Oakland has the highest rate of per-capita homeless residents in the state, according to a July report from the San Francisco controller's office. In Sacramento, the state capital, homelessness has surged nearly 70 percent from 2020 to 2022, the New York Times reported in September.
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass (D.), who ran for office vowing to fix the crisis in her city, this year earmarked $250 million for her "Inside Safe" program, which aimed to move people quickly off the streets. Of the 2,000 people who sheltered through the program, however, only a few hundred found permanent housing, Bass told ABC News.
As of July this year, the city of Los Angeles reported spending more than $32.6 million on 57,533 nightly hotel stays—paying an average rate of $567 per night.
Published under: 2023 , California , Gavin Newsom , Homelessness , Housing and Urban Development , Los Angeles
NO ONE HAS PERPETRATED AS MUCH DAMAGE TO AMERICA THAN JOE BIDEN, BRIBES SUCKER FROM THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICAL PARTY IN U.S. HISTORY.
VIDEO:
American People in Crisis Due to Homelessness and Poverty
The number of homeless Americans rose by 12 percent to a record level in 2023 as President Joe Biden invited several million legal and illegal migrants into homes and jobs.
“More than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12% increase from 2022,” a Friday report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said.
The data is 11 months old, suggesting that the current homeless number is far higher.
January’s count shows an increase of about 70,650 from January 2022.
The number is 70,000 above the 554,000 homeless in January 2020 under President Donald Trump’s lower-migration policies. It matches the 2005 homeless population under President George W. Bush’s pro-migration policies, when media coverage of the homeless issue was one-third greater.
This chart from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development graphs homelessness from 2007-2023 (HUD).
The 2023 number was boosted by a large number of Americans who could not afford housing in Biden’s high-migration economy. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reported on Friday, December 15:
HUD data indicates that the rise in overall homelessness is largely due to a sharp rise in the number of people who became homeless for the first time. Between federal fiscal years 2021 and 2022, the number of people who became newly homeless increased by 25%,
“The most significant causes are … the high cost of housing that have left many Americans living paycheck to paycheck and one crisis away from homelessness,” Jeff Olivet, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, told the Associated Press (AP).
Scott Olson/Getty Images
The federal report did not mention the federal government’s immigration policy, which simultaneously reduces wages and increases housing costs.
Migrants outside of Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, Texas, US, on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. President Joe Biden was confronted at the airport in El Paso on Sunday by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who demanded in a hand-delivered letter that Biden act immediately to stop unauthorized immigration including by building more walls on the border (Paul Ratje/Bloomberg).
Even poor migrants drive up rents because they are more willing to share bedrooms and kitchens.
Homelessness is also rising in high-migration Canada:
Seventy percent of homeless people are Latino or black, even though they comprise 33 percent of the overall population. More than half of the homeless population is in Democrat-run California, New York, and Washington, or Republican-run Florida.
The New York Times reported in October:
After losing his job in January as a purchasing agent for a gardening company in Denver, Josh, 37, who asked that he be identified by his first name only because he had not told his family about his predicament, moved into his Toyota RAV 4.
Finding somewhere safe to park was a daily struggle: “I was bouncing around between gyms, hotel parking lots, light industrial areas and the side streets off of hotels or apartments,” he said …
He called the Colorado Safe Parking Initiative, one of the newest in the country which operates thirteen [homeless parking] lots in Denver, and begged the operator for a spot. Josh now lives in one of the lots and commutes to his chemotherapy appointments.
Biden’s increased tax spending for landlords has prevented even greater levels of homelessness. For example, HUD declared:
Since Day One, the Biden-Harris Administration has been tackling the nation’s homelessness crisis with the urgency it requires, prioritizing new resources and programs to help communities quickly reconnect people experiencing homelessness to housing.
Homelessness is driven by Biden’s “Bidenomics” policy. The policy uses mass migration to expand government spending, suppress wages, spike real estate values, boost consumer spending, and spur the stock market.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about “Bidenomics” in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on August 9, 2023 (Photo by Jim WATSON/AFP).
The policy is a reverse of the economic policy through the Cold War, when tight curbs on immigration allowed people to buy homes for growing families and pressured companies to grow productivity and develop new technologies:
Biden’s strategy has succeeded for investors.
For example, rents have sharply increased since early 2020, according to Nerdwallet.com: “Since the beginning of the pandemic, rents have increased 29.4% overall, according to the real estate website Zillow.”
Similarly, Americans’ wages have flatlined, helping the stock market climb by 21 percent since Biden’s inauguration:
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