Nearly 2 tons of marijuana found at Miami port

A pot seizure at the Port of Miami is the biggest in Miami in years, with the drugs valued at $7.6 million. Someone in Kingston, Jamaica, is missing a lot of marijuana — nearly two tons of it — after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials made their biggest Port of Miami bust in more than two years. The 3,837 pounds of marijuana was discovered during a routine search of a ship originating in Australia and bound for Colombia, Customs spokeswoman Norma Morfa said. The marijuana is valued at $7.6 million.

The ship stopped in Kingston, where officials say the container holding the marijuana was loaded onto the ship. The marijuana was packed between magnetite, an iron oxide. An investigation is ongoing. No arrests have been made. “They’re always trying to come up with different ways of bringing in contraband,” Morfa said. “This was one of the times when I guess they weren’t that smart. It was easy to find … it wasn’t actually hidden.”

The last time customs officials found so much marijuana in Miami was in February 2009 when they seized 3,428 pounds on a ship bound from Australia to Jamaica. The drugs were loaded in Kingston before the ship came to Miami. That time, the crew was supposedly carrying containers of wine, but federal officers noticed something unusual during an X-ray. A drug-sniffing dog led them to the marijuana, stuffed in 82 burlap sacks. The latest shipment, last Friday, was even easier to spot, Morfa said.

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