Border officers at the San Ysidro Port of Entry pulled more than 90 pounds of cocaine out of a vehicle's doors, the latest in a steady run of drug busts at the nation's busiest land crossing. The discovery was announced Wednesday by the agency overseeing the port, which credited its officers with another major interdiction.
“Our officers did it again,” Director of Field Operations Sidney Aki wrote in a post on X
, adding that CBP seized over 90 lbs of cocaine found in the doors of a vehicle. Aki, who has led CBP's San Diego Field Office since January 2022 after nine years as Port Director of San Ysidro itself, framed the seizure as part of the agency's broader mission, writing that the officers' work is “making our nation safer day in and day out.”
A Familiar Hiding Spot at a Chokepoint Crossing
A July case at San Ysidro involved cocaine concealed inside a vehicle. In July, officers found 40.38 pounds of cocaine wrapped in black tape and stuffed inside the rear seats and cargo area of a Toyota RAV4, a case detailed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that ended with a 24-year-old U.S. citizen driver arrested and handed to Homeland Security Investigations.
The crossing itself helps explain why it draws attention. San Ysidro is the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere, processing roughly 70,000 northbound passenger vehicles and 20,000 pedestrians a day across 34 inspection lanes, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The port has a direct link between Interstate 5 and Mexican Federal Highway 1. Recent cases have involved drugs concealed in vehicle doors and a bus fuel tank.
Why So Few Vehicles Get X-Rayed
Despite more than $2 billion in federal funding aimed at expanding X-ray scanning, CBP was only scanning about 8 percent of passenger vehicles with Non-Intrusive Inspection technology at land ports as of fiscal year 2024, per the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. Congress had tasked CBP with developing a plan to reach a 100 percent high-throughput NII scan rate by 2027, but implementation delays persist.
San Ysidro Port Director Mariza Marin leads the crossing, the San Diego Union-Tribune has reported.
Part of a Wider String of Seizures
This is not an isolated case. In a recent seizure, officers at San Ysidro seized more than 262 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $5 million after finding 110 packages hidden inside a custom compartment built into a commercial bus fuel tank, a case Hoodline previously reported that ended with the bus driver, a Mexican national, arrested and expected to be handed over to California law enforcement.
Across July 2026, officers assigned to the San Diego Field Office seized 2,572 pounds of cocaine, 5,077 pounds of methamphetamine, and 553 pounds of fentanyl valued at roughly $67 million, according to Hoodline, which attributed the figures to a CBP release. The July figures included more cocaine than fentanyl by weight.
