NOGALES, Ariz. (KGUN) — While we’re thinking of the price of eggs—how to even get them----inspectors at the U.S.-Mexican border are hunting them down as illegal contraband.
When inspectors from Customs and Border Protection find things like fentanyl its usually in controller border crossings like Nogales’ Mariposa Port of Entry but inspectors are finding other sorts of contraband, and every once in awhile—it’s eggs.
At Our Sweet Lil Cakery Brenda McClure knows what it’s like to go to great lengths to find eggs.
“We go through anywhere from 120, 280 in a week.”
For her, creating cupcakes requires an endless store to store quest for the eggs that hold it all together. The idea of slipping eggs across the border was never on her menu.
“I just couldn't even wrap my head around that. It was just so crazy that people would be doing that.”
In Nogales, at the Mariposa Port of Entry, specialized CBP inspectors inspect food coming across the border. They check commercial loads, and individual cars, looking for insects, and diseases that could endanger US food supplies.
Carlos Gallardo is CBP’s Chief of Agricultural Operations at the port.
KGUN9 Reporter Craig Smith asked him: “Are you on a particular alert for eggs right now?
He says, “Yes, we always are. We always are looking for any prohibited agriculture items such as eggs or avian products. But right now, with the high concern, concerned with avian influenza, we're looking out for it as well.”
CBP says across all the ports it protects, egg discoveries and confiscations are up 29 percent compared to the year before.
In Nogales, inspectors say they see three or four people a week trying to bring in some eggs.
They’re not cartel smugglers moving a new high value contraband, or people looking to hide a few dozen eggs to bring to family or friends. They’re usually U.S. tourists who did not know the couple of eggs they still had in a cooler must be thrown out because they could carry bird flu.
If they do tell inspectors they have the eggs, the eggs get confiscated and destroyed, if they don’t they could be cracked with a 300 dollar fine.
So while inspectors search for eggs to protect the food supply, Brenda McClure searches for eggs to keep the cupcakes coming.