Coast Guard intercepts $211.3 million in cocaine
The total haul, announced this week, came about despite elusive smugglers, a storm interrupting efforts and the cutter having to cover a large swath of the Pacific. On Thursday, May 29, the cutter reached Port Everglades and offloaded more than 28,000 pounds of cocaine bales from the ship, all captured in just over a week earlier this month.
Although the USCGC Thetis, a 270-foot-long cutter, is based out of Key West as part of Coast Guard Atlantic Area Command, it was operating along the Pacific coast. It, and a MH-65 Dolphin helicopter embarked on it, located several naval drug stashes, seizing more than a dozen tons.
The series of interdictions started on May 3, after aerial reconnaissance noted two suspicious vessels off the coast of Mexico. The Thetis caught up to them and found 4,630 pounds of cocaine. On May 3, a maritime patrol aircraft located two suspicious vessels approximately 170 miles west of Mexico. Thetis' crew interdicted the vessels and seized 4,630 pounds of cocaine. The Coast Guard crew transferred all but 22 pounds of the drug to Ecuadorian law enforcement. Two days later, the ship's helicopter crew spotted a bale field — with multiple wrapped up bundles of drugs floating in the water waiting for pick up by smugglers. This one, located 475 miles southwest of Colima, Mexico, had just shy of 10,000 of cocaine.
The next day, May 6, the Thetis' helicopter crew spotted another pair of ships dumping cocaine bundles into the water. However a storm forced the Coast Guard to lose track of the smugglers. When it passed, the ship's crew found several fields containing a total of 14,559 pounds of drugs. One last field was found on May 10, with nearly 4,000 pounds of cocaine in it.
The Coast Guard did not indicate in its release where the narcotics were from or what group was behind the trafficking.
'The more than 33,000 pounds of drugs seized by Thetis this patrol also represents the determination of a crew who continues to find a way to improvise, adapt, and overcome to keep an aging cutter in the fight and accomplish this mission,' Cmdr. Ryan Kelley, the cutter's commander, said in the Coast Guard's release.
The Coast Guard's mission involves law enforcement action against drug smugglers, and its ships regularly intercept vessels carrying cocaine and other narcotics to the United States or other countries. Over the last year, the Coast Guard has carried out several high-value seizures, intercepting as much as half a billion in drugs last spring. Earlier this year the cutter the USCGC Waesche brought in more than $275 million in cocaine it seized while at sea, a deployment that saw one crewmember go missing.
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