It didn’t land on anyone’s head, as President Trump warned, but a massive load of drugs — nearly 100 pounds — was launched across the border fence in Douglas, Arizona, earlier this week.
Border Patrol agents watching on remote video saw the massive bundle of marijuana coming over the fence, and agents on the ground responded immediately.
They found the 96-pound load, wrapped in plastic and tape, near the corner of H Avenue and 1st Street in Douglas, a town that sits on the border in southeastern Arizona.
The agency said the drugs are worth $48,000.
Nobody has been arrested yet in connection with the attempt.
CBP didn’t say how the bundle was fired, but a month ago Border Patrol agents and the Douglas Police Department found a 140-pound load they said had been shot across the fence by catapult.
Mr. Trump last month had cited the prevalence of drug loads being tossed over the border as another reason for his border wall, saying it’s a reason to make the wall see-through.
“As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over,” he said. “As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.”
Critics were merciless in mocking Mr. Trump for suggesting drugs were being thrown over the border.
The Atlantic said he’d adopted a “Wile E. Coyote” approach to border security, while Slate questioned the president’s grasp on reality. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat and a prominent Trump critic on Capitol Hill, quipped that the real question if someone had been hit was “would it be covered by Trumpcare or would Mexico pay for it?”
The Washington Post sought out scientists to calculate whether a person could heft 60 pounds of drugs over the border wall, while late-night comic Seth Meyers said Mr. Trump had entered the realm of fantasy.
“Wait a minute. Trump thinks drug dealers are going to walk up to the border wall with a 60-pound bag of drugs and then chuck it over to another drug dealer? It’s official: Donald Trump thinks in cartoons,” Mr. Meyers said on his NBC program.
But border experts say smugglers are turning to a wide range of methods to get drugs over, including t-shirt cannons, drones, ultralights, catapults and even cranes that swing the drug loads over from Mexico to the U.S. on their arms, then drop them for pickup.
Border communities are a prime location for those kinds of operations because the drugs can be launched straight into a neighborhood on the U.S. side, where someone is waiting to pick them up.
Agents in San Diego earlier this month managed to nab a drug courier picking up a load from an unmanned aerial vehicle. Agents said it was the first time in the San Diego sector that they’d gotten the courier, the drugs and the drone all in the same bust.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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