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Government Sues Railroad For Hauling Drugs
March 19, 2009SAN DIEGO -- The U.S. Justice Department filed lawsuits in San Diego and Houston seeking $37 million in penalties against the Union Pacific Railroad Co. for allegedly failing to prevent the use of its rail cars to smuggle drugs from Mexico into the United States.
The Justice Department alleges that on 37 separate occasions, from November 2001 to October 2006, Customs and Border Patrol officials found more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana on Union Pacific rail cars coming from Mexico, and that CBP fined the railroad $33.6 million that the company has refused to pay.
Union Pacific was not immediately available to comment. The government is seeking fines from the railroad under a law that says freight haulers must say in a manifest what is in their containers entering the country, and that none of the Union Pacific manifests listed illegal drugs in the cargo.
For example, the complaint filed in Houston alleges that on June 16, 2003, Union Pacific submitted a manifest to CBP for entry at the Port of Entry at Brownsville, Texas, indicating its rail cars were empty, but that CBP agents found 99 packages containing 117 kilograms of cocaine behind a false wall on the bottom of a rail car.
The Justice Department alleges the drugs were in rail cars that came across the border at ports of entry at Calexico, Calif., and Brownsville, Texas.
Union Pacific is the largest freight train company in North America, with substantial rail operations in Mexico that cross into the United States in California, Arizona and Texas.
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