Elderly man charged with smuggling $250K in marijuana

An elderly Brownsville man was arrested at the Gateway International Bridge on Monday when he allegedly tried to smuggle nearly a quarter million dollars in marijuana into the United States.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says Federico Hernandez Garza, 74, of Brownsville, was hauling two bundles of wood flooring in a 1995 Ford Aerostar. CBP says he was sent to secondary inspection when an officer found inconsistencies in the bundles of wood.

An imaging system scan confirmed the abnormalities, so the drug dog "Gulliver" was brought into to sniff through the wood flooring, according to a CBP press release.

Officers say they dismantled the pallets and uncovered 48 packages of marijuana from the inside of the pallet. The marijuana weighed 225 pounds and has a street value of $225,000.

"Everyone in our team, from the primary officer to the secondary officer and our K-9 "Gulliver" played an instrumental part in the discovery of this load of marijuana," said Michael Freeman, CBP Port Director, Brownsville.

Garza was detained by ICE special agents and then transferred to the Cameron County Sherriff’s Office on state drug charges.