Texas authorities, Border Patrol make 463-pound marijuana bust

A joint operation along the southern border in Texas resulted in the seizure of hundreds of pounds of marijuana that came across from Mexico over the weekend, authorities said Monday. 

Officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety, the U.S. Border Patrol and Texas Game Wardens made the bust on around 6 p.m. Saturday in Rio Grande City, a border town, a DPS spokesman told Fox News. 

A group of smugglers allegedly brought 463 pounds of marijuana wrapped in multiple packages in from Mexico on a raft and loaded them onto a vehicle, authorities said. 

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When authorities intercepted the smugglers, they fled back onto the Mexican side of the border, they said. 

The bust was part of Operation Lone Star, an effort by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials to combat illegal immigration and crime at the border. Since the security mission began in March, authorities have seized drugs of all kinds, including 336 million “lethal” doses of fentanyl, Abbott said last week. 

The effort is in response to the Biden administration’s refusal to address the issues on the border, he said. 

“All of this is a byproduct of Biden’s open border policies that led to about 2.2 million people being apprehended coming across the border in just this past year,” Abbott said. “When you have that many people coming across the border with the assistance of Mexican drug cartels, it makes it far easier for the greater volume of fentanyl to be crossing our border.”