The Texas Department of Public Safety recently seized roughly $2 million worth of cocaine during an Operation Lone Star traffic stop in Hidalgo County.
A news release from the Texas DPS stated that officers from the Criminal Investigations Division and Texas Highway Patrol pulled over an 18-wheeler in McAllen for a traffic violation and discovered 90 cellophane-wrapped bundles of cocaine in a pallet.
Officers recovered a total of 216 pounds of cocaine during the traffic stop, with further investigation leading agents to a McAllen residence that contained three AR-15 rifles and one AK-47.
The news release further announced that Francisco Marquez-Carretero, Tania Rodriguez-Hernandez, and Christian Martinez Caudillo were arrested and will face charges related to the manufacturing and distribution of a controlled substance.
This seizure was made as a part of Operation Lone Star, which is the joint initiative by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard to protect the southern border from the threats of human smuggling and the traffic of illicit drugs.
A recent news release from the Office of Gov. Greg Abbott stated that this initiative has led to more than 41,500 criminal arrests since it began in March 2021, resulting in over 36,900 felony charges.
Additionally, state law enforcement officers have seized more than 471 million lethal doses of fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid that resulted in the deaths of 2,152 people statewide in 2023, according to Texas Health Data.
In addition to the state taking action to manage this ongoing crisis, the Dallas Police Department established an overdose unit in 2021 that investigates every overdose and attempts to identify the source and trace the distribution of the drug.
“Most of the fentanyl we encounter in the City of Dallas has been pressed into tablets in the form of counterfeit oxycodone pills,” said Jesse Carr, senior public information officer for DPD, while speaking with The Dallas Express.
Carr said that the DPD narcotics units have also worked with the DEA to target and determine the impact of the flow of fentanyl in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, with hopes of reducing the impact as much as possible.
