Another Guyanese is in a New York jail after he was busted with 2.28 kilogrammes of cocaine in his luggage shortly after disembarking a flight from Guyana at the John F. Kennedy Inter-national Airport in New York.
In a sworn complaint seen by this newspaper, Thoi Nguyen, a Special Agent with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said that on October 19, 2019, Deskean Reid arrived at the JFK Airport aboard a Caribbean Airlines flight from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
After he disembarked, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers selected Reid for an enforcement examination. At the time, he was travelling with one black checked bag and one black carry-on backpack. An officer conducted an examination of the checked bag, which Reid said he had checked and further said that the contents of the bag all belonged to him, and that he had packed the bag himself. The officer noticed that the bottom portion of the checked bag felt unusually thick after the contents of the bag were removed.
Reid was then taken to a private search room to continue the inspection and a probe revealed a white powdery substance, which later field-tested for cocaine. The Guyanese was then arrested. After waiving his Miranda rights, Reid admitted that he knew that he had been carrying drugs in his suitcase and that he had expected to receive payment for transporting the drugs following his arrival in the US.
The total weight of cocaine seized was equivalent to just over five pounds, with an estimated street value of US$85,000.
“This seizure illustrates CBP’s efforts to refine and enhance the effectiveness of our detention and interdiction capabilities to combat the entry of illegal drugs into the United States,” Troy Miller, Director, Field Opera-tions, in New York for CBP said in a statement on behalf of the agency.
Reid, who is an artist from Lusignan, East Coast Demerara, has since appeared before Magis-trate Judge Sanket J. Bulsara and has been remanded to prison.
He faces federal narcotics smuggling charges and is expected to be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the U.S. Eastern District Court of New York.
Two days after Reid’s arrest, another Guyanese, Kester Johnson, was also nabbed at the JFK Airport after he was seen acting in a nervous manner. He later expelled some 25 cocaine filled pellets.
