“Something smelled a little bit fishy, but it was not the fish” in a cooler, said Tucson Sector’s Acting Chief Patrol Agent Sabri Dikman in a social media post.
Agents assigned to the I-19 Immigration Checkpoint seized over 17 pounds of fentanyl concealed in a cooler full of fish. The fentanyl pills lined along the walls of the cooler.
The Border Patrol handed over the investigation to the Phoenix Division of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
Last week, the DEA issued a Public Safety Alert warning Americans of the alarming increase in the lethality and availability of fake prescription pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine. DEA’s Public Safety Alert, the first in six years, seeks to raise public awareness of a significant nationwide surge in counterfeit pills that are mass-produced by criminal drug networks in labs, deceptively marketed as legitimate prescription pills, and are killing unsuspecting Americans at an unprecedented rate.