Marijuana harvest turning up at Valley crossings

BROWNSVILLE - Thanksgiving Day originally was a harvest celebration but law enforcement officers said the season is a time of heightened alert.

The fall harvest season applies to marijuana and it's a time when drug dealers increase the movement of the product into the United States, law enforcement officials said.

John Lopez, a Border Patrol spokesman, said the Rio Grande Valley sector has seen an increase in marijuana traffic following the harvest season of the illegal plant, which typically runs from October to late November or early December.

"Right now we're in the middle or the end of marijuana harvest season," Lopez said. "The same way farmers grow and harvest their crops, narcotics dealers have fields of marijuana hidden away and they harvest it the same way a farmer would."

He said recent marijuana traffic is also a result of the success Mexican authorities have had in their war on drugs.

"The cartels feel threatened to lose what they have and take every chance to get past our border," Lopez said. "They try to get rid of their stored drugs and cross it rather than leave it stashed and run the risk of it being discovered by police or the army."

The increased narcotic traffic has faced stiff opposition as border agents have stepped up their presence with their Operation River Freedom Denial, he added.

Lopez said that in past years, the majority of the drug traffic went through the western part of the Rio Grande Valley. However, the crackdown has made drug smugglers deviate from their regular routes and instead use the eastern part of the Valley.

From Oct. 15 to Nov. 19, the agency seized 77,673 pounds of marijuana, valued at $62.1 million, in the Rio Grande Valley sector, which extends as far north as Corpus Christi, Lopez said.

The overwhelming majority of those seizures were in Starr County, the McAllen area and the Falfurrias checkpoint.

Capt. Javier Reyna of the Cameron County Sheriff's Department said that while marijuana is a very common street drug, authorities see a seasonal increase and respond in kind.

"We do see an increase around this time and we step up our interdiction duties," Reyna said. "We have more patrols out and our narcotics units step up their efforts. Sometimes we get lucky and our seizures are in the tons."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Eduardo Perez said the agency doesn't differentiate between harvest season and other
times of the year. It is vigilant at all times.