CBP Aircraft Spots More Than $200,000 in Marijuana

Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Mich. — Over the past two days Air Interdiction Agents assigned to

	click for hi-res A Great Lakes Office of Air and Marine agent stands next to a marijuana plant in Genesee County, Mich., that stood more than 8 feet tall.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Great Lakes Office of Air and Marine have assisted three local police departments in the discovery of three different marijuana field locations.

The first location was spotted by agents while over a corn field in St. Clair County. In all, 62 plants were harvested jointly by OAM agents and the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department.

The second location was spotted over Genesee County. The grow field in Genesee County, which was spread across many acres of land, took agents and the Genesee County Sheriff two days to harvest and resulted in the confiscation of 107 plants.

The third location, which was found Wednesday night in Erie County, Ohio, was discovered while the Great Lakes Office of Air and Marine was responding to a call from the Sandusky Bay Border Patrol station to assist in the search for 4 illegal immigrants that

click for hi-res A Great Lakes Office of Air and Marine agent gets his location on GPS while searching for remaining marijuana plants in a corn field in Genesee County, Mich.

had absconded from a vehicle after a vehicle stop on the Ohio Turnpike. While searching for the fleeing suspects, a grow field containing 26 plants was located in the same field where OAM pilots located one of the four suspects that fled on foot.

In all three events, OAM agents and sheriff’s deputies on the ground had to be directed from pilots overhead in both an AW-139 helicopter and a Cessna 206 aircraft to direct them to the grow locations due to the extremely dense vegetation of the corn fields.

In total, air interdiction agents found and assisted in harvesting 195 marijuana plants over a two-day period that had a street value of over $200,000.

All of the marijuana plants that were confiscated have been turned over to the respective sheriff’s departments and will most likely be destroyed. 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the unified border agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with the management, control and protection of our nation's borders at and between the official ports of entry. CBP is charged with keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out of the country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws.