US Coast Guard has record year in drug seizures - $5.6 billion worth

With a growing cocaine problem, not only in South Lake Tahoe but in the whole country, the U.S Coastguard and their interagency partners are being kept busy seizing the drug from ships in the Pacific Ocean headed to the United States.

The Coast Guard broke records over the last 12 months by removing more than 416,000 pounds of cocaine worth over $5.6 billion from boats and ships. Their previous record was 367,700 pounds seized in 2008.

The crew of the Cutter Waesche offloaded over 39,000 pounds in San Diego on Thursday, a cache worth over $531 million which came from some of their final busts in their fiscal year. In all, the crew turned over narcotics from 25 separate busts that occurred in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Central and South America.

Coast Guardsmen also apprehended 585 suspected drug smugglers during the year, which is also a new record for the service, up from 503 suspected drug smugglers in Fiscal Year 2015. Of those apprehended, 465 were transferred to the U.S. for prosecution, another record for the Coast Guard and their interagency partners.

“This impressive record not only reflects the extraordinary accomplishments of the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard but the continued threat our nation faces from transnational criminal organizations determined to move drugs into our country by any means necessary,” said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson.

“These prosecutions erode and undermine the supply channels critical to the operations of drug kingpins who prey on our citizens with highly addictive drugs and spread violence throughout our hemisphere,” said Vice Adm. Fred Midgette, commander, Coast Guard Pacific Area. “From 2002 to 2011, information obtained from suspects apprehended by the Coast Guard contributed to the arrest and extradition of more than 75 percent of drug kingpins.”

The Coast Guard surged assets, including cutters and personnel, to known drug transit zones in 2014 as part of its Western Hemisphere Strategy. This surge is aimed, in part, at combating the threat of transnational organized crime networks responsible for increased violence and instability in the Western Hemisphere. The gangs, cartels and other illegal organizations throughout the Western Hemisphere that make up these transnational organized crime networks have reach and influence throughout South, Central and North America.

The Coast Guard conducts counternarcotics operations as part of a U.S. government effort to dismantle transnational organized crime networks. These efforts include Joint interagency Task Force South, which is a national task force that executes detection and monitoring of illicit trafficking across all domains; Eleventh and Seventh Coast Guard Districts in Alameda and Miami, respectively, which coordinate the interdiction and seizure of the narcotics and suspects; and numerous U.S. Attorneys’ Offices that coordinate the investigation and prosecution of drug smuggling cases.

Coast Guard counterdrug operations in FY16 by the numbers:

- Cocaine Removed in FY16 – over 416,600 pounds (Coast Guard’s new record)
- Cocaine Removed in FY08 – 367,700 (previous record)
- Value of FY16 Cocaine Removals - $5.6 Billion wholesale
- # of drug interdictions – 263
- Number of suspects detained – 585 (new Coast Guard record up from 503 in FY15)
- Suspects transferred to the U.S. for prosecution – 465 (up from 373 in FY15)
- Smuggling vessels seized - 172
- FY16 self-propelled semisubmersible (SPSS) interdictions – 6
- Total Coast Guard SPSS interdictions – 43 (as of Oct. 12, 2016)
- In FY16, National Security Cutters removed over 85,970 pounds of cocaine worth over $1.1 billion
- In FY16, medium endurance cutters removed nearly 177,600 pounds of cocaine worth over $2.38 billion
- Tactical law enforcement teams removed 79,300 pounds of cocaine worth over $1 billion in FY16

In an average year, Coast Guard interdictions at-sea amount to more than three times the quality of cocaine seized at U.S. borders and with in the country combines.