A little after 3:00 a.m. on March 1st, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers decided a 2001 Toyota Sequoia at the Calexico border crossing warranted closer inspection. Fast forward to an intensive search and hey; there’s a 38-year-old Brazilian citizen in the gas tank.
CBP explains that “the port’s imaging system and discovered anomalies in the vehicle’s gas tank and under the rear seats,” in a press release. That prompted officers to dig around, and what led them to a “partially modified” gas tank.
Advertisement
It doesn’t look like the tank was holding fuel and the man at the same time; rather it appears that “secondary” tank was hacked up to (barely) fit a human and fitted near the stock location in hopes that it would pass by unnoticed. Didn’t work out for the person driving the car, who will face federal charges for the poor bastard riding in what must have been a torturous plastic cell.
“CBP placed an immigration hold on the Brazilian man to initiate removal from the United States at the conclusion of the driver’s criminal proceedings,” the department says. The SUV has been seized.
Sponsored
The CBP did not specify what exactly tipped them off to search this particular vehicle a little more closely. I just can’t stop thinking about how much it must have sucked to ride in that plastic cell strapped to the bottom of an old Toyota.
Image via U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Contact the author at andrew@jalopnik.com.
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
