Federal task force ramps up drug busts at Anchorage’s airport

Alaska’s law enforcement agencies this year intensified a campaign to intercept drugs coming into Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in baggage as well as through the mail in response to the state’s high number of fatal drug overdoses.

The result of that initiative was a major increase in drug seizures, according to figures released this week by a partnership that targets drug trafficking hotspots.

Through mid-December, law enforcement officials have intercepted 317 pounds of illegal substances coming through the airport complex, which includes not just the commercial airline terminals but also major cargo hubs for FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service, according to the Alaska High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program.

Almost a third of the seized drugs, some 100 pounds, was in the form of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that’s come to dominate Alaska’s drug supply and driven a steep rise in overdose deaths the last three years.

The seizures announced this week do not include additional confiscations by law enforcement, either at mail and freight facilities elsewhere in Alaska or in the course of routine policing and investigations. Drugs seized at the airport account for more than half of annual total seizures by the agencies in the task force, according to Alaska State Troopers.

Overall, this year’s airport seizures amount to a more than 16-fold increase in the volume of drugs confiscated five years ago, according to data provided by the troopers.

Authorities said the task force’s seizures this year intercepted drugs that would otherwise have made their way all over the state.

As the state’s population hub, Anchorage is the destination for many of those packages, said troopers spokesman Austin McDaniel. But significant amounts of drugs are also passing through en route to more rural areas where they command higher prices.

“We are also seeing dangerous drugs bound for small Alaska communities, or other urban centers such as Fairbanks or the Mat-Su,” McDaniel said.

Nationally, fatal drug overdoses fell last year, bucking a sharp rise during the pandemic that followed a long, steady increase over the course of the opioid epidemic. In Alaska, however, state health officials last year attributed 357 deaths to overdoses, a 45% increase over 2022.

Anchorage’s airport handles a huge volume of the state’s mail, freight and airline passengers. As such, federal officials say, it is a major hub for illegal drug traffic.

“That was the primary source of drugs coming into Alaska, through the Postal Service and other carriers, as well,” U.S. Attorney S. Lane Tucker said in an interview this week.

[Fatal drug overdoses are declining nationally — but not in Alaska]

Since 2018, nearly two dozen Alaska law enforcement agencies have participated in HIDTA, a federally funded program to curb drug crime through coordination, communication and training.

As part of the program this year, the state’s law enforcement agencies worked with federal prosecutors and the United States Postal Inspectors Service, the police arm of the Postal Service, to adapt how they intercept drugs arriving in Alaska through cargo, mail, parcels, passengers and luggage flowing through the airport.

According to troopers, in 2019 the Anchorage Airport Interdiction Team seized 8,580 grams of illegal drugs, which does not include cannabis. By 2022, the seizure weight was up to 66,364 grams. Through mid-December this year it was 143,911 grams.

Though it’s impossible to say what share of the overall drug supply reaching Alaskans passes through Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, it appears significant based on reported seizure data. The 100 pounds of fentanyl caught this year at the airport is a little more than half of the 183 pounds seized by law enforcement statewide in 2023, according to figures in the state Department of Public Safety’s annual drug report.

“It has proven very fruitful,” said Cornelius “Moose” Sims, commander of the troopers’ Special Drug Enforcement Unit, about the partnership and focus on the airport.

Federal prosecutors said they have increased the number and speed of search warrant applications. Tucker dedicated a team of attorneys to “very expeditiously” process warrants for parcels deemed suspicious, with the goal of getting warrants approved the same day.

“We’ve quadrupled the number of parcels we’ve been able to search and seize,” Tucker said.

Federal postal facilities and the material moving through them are subject to federal protections known as the “sanctity of the seal.” Access to the mail system is restricted, even to law enforcement.

“Unless you are with the Postal Inspector Service … you don’t even have access to postal facilities,” said USPIS Postal Inspector Alex Laumb.

To expedite drug trafficking investigations, the Alaska HIDTA borrowed an approach piloted Outside to train and cross-deputize state troopers to formally assist postal inspectors. That’s added “more eyes on the problem” to follow up on tips or spot irregular-looking shipments at the airport, Laumb said.

Five law enforcement agencies have put staff on the airport detail, including the troopers, Anchorage Police Department, Anchorage Airport Police Officers and local law enforcement officers from smaller jurisdictions.

“We have 11 members between the parcel side and the passenger side still working at the airport,” said Sims. “We’re all working with postal.”

The addition of state and local police to federal parcel monitoring is not unique to Alaska. But because state residents and businesses rely so heavily on mail and material shipped in, officials say shifting resources to the biggest hub in the state has been disproportionately effective.

“I would say the uniqueness would be to the extent of mail’s importance to trafficking in Alaska, and Anchorage being its focal point,” Laumb said. “Everything flows through the Anchorage processing and distribution system.”