NOGALES: Nogales police were busy searching for some bold drug smugglers Monday night, after reports came in of four men hauling drugs over the border fence.
Police said cases like this are an everyday business for the department, which is located along the nation’s busiest drug corridor.
They receive reports of drug smuggling spotted by citizens or other agencies patrolling the border every single day.
Just in the last few days, Nogales Police Detective Robert Fierros said they have busted four men for smuggling drugs through the border fence into the U.S.
Some of them have been caught near the fence, others as they were getting ready to load up the bundles of marijuana into cars parked on nearby streets.
On historic Crawford Street in Nogales, however, life-long residents said life has been good.
It is a community where no neighbor is a stranger, and many sleep with doors and windows unlocked, despite the reports of international drug smugglers right outside their door step.
“I’ve never felt safer here and I’ve never felt threatened,” said David Lundstrom, a life-long resident who lives in the historic neighborhood.
Outside the gated walls of his home, Nogales police and federal border patrol agents work around the clock, busting international drug smugglers every single day.
“We are primarily in a well-known corridor for human and drug smuggling here in town,” said Detective Fierros, a spokesman for the Nogales Police Department.
He added that most of the drug smuggling activity takes place in the dark of the night, where smugglers and packages disappear into the dark.
A hot zone is along West International street, along the U.S./Mexico border.
Police said the drug smugglers are bold and creative.
They can tell how the drugs were smuggled by looking at the packages. Thin packages are usually slipped through the bars of the border fence.
Round packages shaped like balls are usually thrown or catapulted over the top of the fence.
Those that come with homemade straps or harnesses are usually strapped on a smuggler’s back, while he scales the fence.
Some videos showed smugglers building ramps and send pick-up trucks over and across the border on them. Many of the drugs would be left at drop-off points where someone on the U.S. side would know where to find them, and get them ready for transport.
“Just recently a home here on this street, a homeowner got to his home and found some abandoned marijuana packages in his driveway, someone had left them there just ready to be picked up I guess,” Fierros said.
