U.S. border agents catch man with protected parakeets in his underwear

When Customs and Border Protection Officers asked Jesse Agus Martinez about the suspicious bulge in his pants, he claimed that the protrusion was natural — using a Spanish word for a male appendage. But on further inspection, officers say they found two heavily sedated parakeets in his underwear.

Martinez, a 35-year-old U.S. citizen residing in Tijuana, Mexico, was indicted Friday after authorities say he attempted to smuggle a protected species — orange-fronted parakeets — into the United States last month without following proper quarantine and clearance procedures.

Border agents found the two juvenile birds “breathing but heavily sedated” inside brown sacks that were then tucked into Martinez’s crotch, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of California said. Martinez h