breaking

Federal agents seize $20M cocaine shipment hidden in trailer at California border

Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted more than 1,000 pounds of cocaine concealed beneath the wooden floorboards of a commercial flatbed trailer at California's Calexico Port of Entry. X-ray scanning revealed structural anomalies in the trailer bed. A drug-sniffing dog then alerted officers to the contraband. Officers removed 269 bundles of rebar before dismantling the floorboards to discover 366 packages of narcotics valued at approximately $20 million. Driver Jose Manuel Lopez Lopez, 44, was arrested after crossing from Mexicali, Mexico. Homeland Security Investigations and Drug Enforcement Administration personnel assisted the seizure. Federal prosecutors characterized the recovery as "a tremendous amount of drugs, even by the standards of this district." The bust ranks as the Southern District of California's second-largest cocaine seizure in 2026, behind a May interdiction involving a cross-border tunnel that yielded $45 million in suspected cocaine.