Customs seizes marijuana shipment; one arrested

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion ar­rest­ed and charged one per­son af­ter seiz­ing a ship­ment of mar­i­jua­na dur­ing rou­tine op­er­a­tions at a Port of Spain Cus­toms Bond­ed Area on Wednes­day, March 18, 2026.

Of­fi­cers of the Pre­ven­tive Branch re­spond­ed and car­ried out a de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion of a ship­ment pre­sent­ed for clear­ance. Dur­ing the in­spec­tion, they found four pack­ages con­tain­ing a green plant-like ma­te­r­i­al con­cealed with­in the car­go.

Field tests con­firmed the sub­stance as cannabis, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $424,490.

Au­thor­i­ties de­tained the sus­pect at the scene and sub­se­quent­ly laid charges. The ac­cused lat­er ap­peared be­fore a Mas­ter of the High Court and se­cured bail in the sum of $200,000 with sure­ty.

The di­vi­sion said the seizure re­flects its con­tin­ued ef­forts to pro­tect the bor­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go through in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions and en­force­ment ac­tiv­i­ty aimed at pre­vent­ing il­le­gal nar­cotics from en­ter­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

It added that since Jan­u­ary 2026, of­fi­cers have in­ten­si­fied en­force­ment ef­forts, lead­ing to the in­ter­cep­tion and seizure of nar­cotics with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue ex­ceed­ing $13 mil­lion.

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion said it re­mains com­mit­ted to dis­man­tling the il­lic­it drug trade, com­bat­ing transna­tion­al crime, and en­forc­ing the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go while pro­tect­ing na­tion­al rev­enue and main­tain­ing high stan­dards of in­tegri­ty.