It was anything but a slow year at the South Texas ports of entry. Federal agents say they recorded a 62 percent jump in narcotics seizures this fiscal year, hauling in roughly 71,700 pounds of drugs worth an estimated $674 million on the street. Methamphetamine and cocaine dominated the haul, which officials laid out this week at a multiagency event in Laredo.
Federal tally and scope
According to a local media release from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, officers assigned to eight South Texas ports of entry under the Laredo Field Office posted a combined 62 percent increase in hard narcotics seized for Fiscal Year 2025. The reporting period runs from Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30, 2025, and covers seizures made at the ports, not between them.
What was seized
Reporting by Texas Border Business shows the total haul included about 54,994 pounds of methamphetamine and 12,397 pounds of cocaine, along with roughly 3,453 pounds of marijuana, nearly 236 pounds of heroin and about 196 pounds of fentanyl. The same coverage notes that officers also seized $5.4 million in undeclared currency, 514 weapons and about 54,896 rounds of ammunition that were displayed at the Laredo press event.
Local officials credit policy shifts
Local law enforcement officials were quick to link the numbers to changes in how migrants and encounters are handled at the border. Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland told WOAI that when Border Patrol agents were pulled off interdiction work to process large groups of people, smugglers slipped more loads between the ports. He said cartels are now shifting back to pushing drugs through traditional methods like semi-loads and comingled cargo. “Cartels are going back to those traditional ways at the ports of entry,” Cleveland said.
Why the numbers may have risen
In its release, CBP reported that the Laredo Field Office encountered more than 89,000 inadmissible persons over the fiscal year, a decline the agency said allowed officers to devote more time to screening and targeting cargo. Federal briefings this fall pointed to sharp drops in nationwide encounters, a trend lawmakers have cited when talking about how agents and resources are being reassigned. The House Homeland Security Committee noted that October marked an unusually low start to the fiscal year for encounters across the country, which helps explain why more personnel could be shifted back to port enforcement instead of field processing.
What comes next
Officials at the Laredo event stressed that the spike in seizures reflects a mix of targeted inspections, technology and canine teams as much as any single policy decision, and they promised continued coordination across agencies to keep pressure on cross-border trafficking. Observers noted that how agents are deployed, and which tactics get priority, will go a long way toward determining whether these seizure totals stay elevated in the year ahead, according to local coverage of the CBP announcement.
