K-9 sniffs out undeclared fruit trees in arriving luggage at Detroit Metro Airport

A K-9 assigned to work at Detroit Metro Airport with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists was credited with two recent instances of detecting undeclared trees among incoming luggage.

One of those circumstances involved an undeclared, suspected fruit tree from Moldova. 

The CBP Director of Field Operations Marty C. Raybon shared a video of K-9 Baylee, wearing a CBP identification vest, sniffing out the small, undeclared tree on March 3 while checking arriving luggage at the airport. 

“Trees like this can carry exotic plant pests and plant pathogens. Please leave the trees behind and don’t pack a pest!” the agency said in a social media video shared Monday on Instagram. 

The same K-9 also found small, undeclared plum trees inside luggage that had arrived with a passenger from Albania on Feb. 20.  

“These trees could have carried plum pox virus, a serious disease that harms stone fruit,” Raybon said in that social media post shared Sunday on Instagram. “The U.S. recently got rid of this virus, so it’s important to keep it out.” 

A list of prohibited and restricted items for airline travel into the U.S. can be found on the CBP website.      

Previous reports of unwelcome agricultural pests intercepted at Detroit Metro have included a medfly amid damaged fruit with a passenger from Albania, caper fruit fly larvae amid fresh flowers from Italy, and remains of an invasive khapra beetle found amid luggage arriving from Lebanon.