Dominican Nationals Caught With $6 Million Worth of Cocaine in Boat

U.S. border patrol agents have seized a boatload of narcotics thought to be worth $6 million, after spotting the vessel off the coast of Puerto Rico.
Eleven bales of cocaine, weighing over 660 pounds, was confiscated, while two Dominican Republic citizens were arrested.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said one of its K9s alerted officers to the presence of the drugs.
The discovery is the latest in a string of narcotics seizures in recent weeks, with one port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border seeing over a ton in July alone.
Wednesday’s incident happened around 43 miles south of Ponce, Puerto Rico, CBP said, with one of its aircraft detecting the vessel.
The Ponce CBP Air and Marine Operations Marine Unit then sent a boat to intercept the blue and white vessel, with two men on board.
The bales were seized, and the pair arrested, before being handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for further investigation.
On August 24, CBP officers at the Rio Grande port of entry on the southwest border found $3 million worth of cocaine hidden among a charcoal shipment.
CBP figures show officers seized 442,000 pounds of drugs along the southwest border and in coastal areas between October 2023 and July 2024, over 42,000 events.
When it comes to cocaine, 2024 and 2023 have both seen over 52,000 pounds seized by border patrol.
The DEA’s last National Drug Threat Assessment in May 2024 highlighted the use of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic by drug cartels as part of their smuggling routes, particularly for cocaine.
Newsweek reached out to the DEA for further comment Friday morning.
There were an estimated 107,543 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health statistics.
This chart, provided by Statista, shows coca leaf-producing countries worldwide and estimated cocaine users by region in 2022.
Cocaine is a highly addictive stimulant drug created from the leaves of the coca plant, which is native to South America.
“People are using drugs whether we like it or not, and that has to be the starting point for any pragmatic policy thinking,” Steve Rolles, Senior Policy Analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, previously told Newsweek.
“We have a choice; we either responsibly regulate these drugs or we leave them in the hands of organized crime groups. There is no third option in which those markets simply disappear.”
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