Massive cross-border tunnel found linking Tijuana, San Diego

SAN DIEGO (AP) — U.S. authorities on Monday introduced the discovery of a major drug smuggling tunnel — operating concerning the size of a six soccer fields — from Mexico to a warehouse in an industrial area in the U.S.

The key passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and air flow techniques, electricity and bolstered walls, authorities stated. It was found close to San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing in an space the place more than a dozen other subtle tunnels have been discovered in the final 20 years.

U.S. authorities stated it was unknown how lengthy the tunnel had been working and what quantity of medicine, if any, obtained via undetected. They seized 1,762 pounds (799 kg) of cocaine, 165 kilos (75 kg) of meth and 3.5 kilos (1.6 kg) of heroin in connection with the investigation.

Six people, ages 31 to 55, have been charged with conspiring to distribute cocaine. All are Southern California residents.

The tunnel is in probably the most fortified stretches of the border, illustrating the limitations of border partitions. While considered effective towards small, crudely constructed tunnels known as “gopher holes,” walls are not any match for extra refined passages that run deeper underground.

The latest passage, discovered Friday, ran one-third of a mile (532 m) to Tijuana. It was 4 feet (1.2 m) in diameter and about six tales deep.

The kind of medication seized may signal a shift from the multi-ton loads of marijuana that had been usually found in discoveries before California legalized pot for leisure use in 2019.

Exhausting medication, equivalent to heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl, are usually smuggled through official border crossings from Mexico because their small size and lack of odor make them tough to detect. However tunnels give smugglers a bonus of with the ability to carry large loads at lightning pace.

The tunnel exited the US in a nondescript warehouse named “Amistad Park” on a road that's busy with massive semitrailers through the day however quiet at night. On Monday, armed guards watched over a small shaft with a ladder that descended into the tunnel.

After staking out a house that was recently used to stash drugs, officers started making site visitors stops of vehicles that had been there or at a warehouse near the border, turning up boxes full of cocaine, in accordance with a federal prison criticism filed in San Diego.

They raided the properties — discovering no different medicine at the warehouse, however a tunnel opening carved into the cement ground, federal prosecutors said.

Authorities have discovered about 15 subtle tunnels on California’s border with Mexico since 2006.

Many tunnels, including the one introduced Monday, are in San Diego’s Otay Mesa industrial space, where clay-like soil is conducive to digging and warehouses provide cowl.

The cross-border passages date back to the early 1990s and have been used primarily to smuggle multi-ton a great deal of marijuana. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration mentioned in 2020 that they're usually present in California and Arizona and associated with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

Authorities declined to hyperlink the latest tunnel to any specific cartel. They claimed victory regardless of not knowing how lengthy it had been working.

“There is no such thing as a extra mild on the end of this narco-tunnel,” said Randy Grossman, U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of California. “We'll take down every subterranean smuggling route we find to maintain illicit medication from reaching our streets and destroying our households and communities.”

By federal legislation, U.S. authorities must fill the U.S. aspect of tunnels with concrete after they are discovered.

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Associated Press writer Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.