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Wall, schmall: Ford Fusions arrive from Mexico with $1 million of marijuana
With all the talk of healthcare bills and tax reform battles in Congress, Americans might've forgotten about another of Donald Trump's pet projects: a border wall with Mexico. Last week, however, the president revisited that topic, declaring that he wants the wall to be transparent so that U.S. border agents will be able to see the bags of drugs that dealers are hurling into the country from the other side.
Odd as that may sound, the man has a point: smugglers have used a range of methods to toss bags of drugs into America. (Whether anyone has been injured by the high-flying bundles is unknown.)
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But apparently that's not the only option that dealers have to get drugs into the U.S. They can also smuggle them using cars manufactured in Mexico. One recent shipment of brand-new Ford Fusions built at Ford's Hermosillo plant came packed with a toasty $1 million worth of marijuana.
In Louisiana, we call that lagniappe.
The weed was discovered not by border agents, not by the shipping company that brought them into the country, not by Ford, but by a dealership in Youngstown, Ohio, where the cars had been delivered.
Dealership employees probably got suspicious when they discovered that the cars had no spare tires, but instead rounded packages crammed with marijuana. The packages were worked into half-moon shapes, with two in each spare tire wheel well. (Which sounds like the sort of project that could keep stoners happy for hours.) Each pair of packages weighed about 32 pounds.
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Interestingly enough, this isn't the first time marijuana has been found inside Fords manufactured in Mexico. This year alone, shipments have been discovered in Arizona and Minnesota.
Drug enforcement agents might be especially alarmed because it appears in each of these cases, a hitch arose with the Mexican smugglers' U.S. counterparts. Officials say that the drugs should have been retrieved on this side of the wall, but in these particular cases, the pick-up never took place.
That suggests that these were glitches--the exceptions, not the rules. And that, in turn, suggests that successful drug-smuggling efforts could be taking place all the time.
Both Ford and the train shipping company CSX, which transported the vehicles to the U.S., say that they're taking the matter very seriously.
With all the talk of healthcare bills and tax reform battles in Congress, Americans might've forgotten about another of Donald Trump's pet projects: a border wall with Mexico. Last week, however, the president revisited that topic, declaring that he wants the wall to be transparent so that U.S. border agents will be able to see the bags of drugs that dealers are hurling into the country from the other side.
Odd as that may sound, the man has a point: smugglers have used a range of methods to toss bags of drugs into America. (Whether anyone has been injured by the high-flying bundles is unknown.)
READ: 2018 Subaru Crosstrek first drive: memories are made of these
But apparently that's not the only option that dealers have to get drugs into the U.S. They can also smuggle them using cars manufactured in Mexico. One recent shipment of brand-new Ford Fusions built at Ford's Hermosillo plant came packed with a toasty $1 million worth of marijuana.
In Louisiana, we call that lagniappe.
The weed was discovered not by border agents, not by the shipping company that brought them into the country, not by Ford, but by a dealership in Youngstown, Ohio, where the cars had been delivered.
Dealership employees probably got suspicious when they discovered that the cars had no spare tires, but instead rounded packages crammed with marijuana. The packages were worked into half-moon shapes, with two in each spare tire wheel well. (Which sounds like the sort of project that could keep stoners happy for hours.) Each pair of packages weighed about 32 pounds.
DON'T MISS: 2018 Hyundai Sonata first drive: Finally looking the part
Interestingly enough, this isn't the first time marijuana has been found inside Fords manufactured in Mexico. This year alone, shipments have been discovered in Arizona and Minnesota.
Drug enforcement agents might be especially alarmed because it appears in each of these cases, a hitch arose with the Mexican smugglers' U.S. counterparts. Officials say that the drugs should have been retrieved on this side of the wall, but in these particular cases, the pick-up never took place.
That suggests that these were glitches--the exceptions, not the rules. And that, in turn, suggests that successful drug-smuggling efforts could be taking place all the time.
Both Ford and the train shipping company CSX, which transported the vehicles to the U.S., say that they're taking the matter very seriously.
