Large cross-border tunnel discovered linking Tijuana, San Diego

SAN DIEGO (AP) — U.S. authorities on Monday introduced the discovery of a major drug smuggling tunnel — working about the size of a six football fields — from Mexico to a warehouse in an industrial space in the U.S.

The key passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and ventilation programs, electrical energy and bolstered partitions, authorities said. It was found near San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing in an area the place more than a dozen other sophisticated tunnels have been found in the last twenty years.

U.S. authorities stated it was unknown how lengthy the tunnel had been working and what quantity of medication, if any, received by way of undetected. They seized 1,762 kilos (799 kg) of cocaine, 165 kilos (75 kg) of meth and three.5 pounds (1.6 kg) of heroin in reference to 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 one of the vital fortified stretches of the border, illustrating the limitations of border walls. Whereas considered effective against small, crudely constructed tunnels referred to as “gopher holes,” partitions are not any match for extra subtle passages that run deeper underground.

The most recent 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 stories deep.

The kind of medicine seized may sign a shift from the multi-ton loads of marijuana that have been often present in discoveries before California legalized pot for leisure use in 2019.

Exhausting medicine, corresponding to heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl, are sometimes smuggled via official border crossings from Mexico because their small size and lack of odor make them tough to detect. But tunnels give smugglers an advantage of being able to carry big hundreds at lightning pace.

The tunnel exited the United States in a nondescript warehouse named “Amistad Park” on a avenue that is busy with massive semitrailers in the course of the day but quiet at night time. On Monday, armed guards watched over a small shaft with a ladder that descended into the tunnel.

After staking out a home that was recently used to stash drugs, officers began making visitors stops of autos that had been there or at a warehouse near the border, turning up packing containers filled with cocaine, in keeping with a federal prison complaint filed in San Diego.

They raided the properties — discovering no other drugs on the warehouse, but a tunnel opening carved into the cement flooring, federal prosecutors mentioned.

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

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

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

Authorities declined to link the latest tunnel to any specific cartel. They claimed victory despite not figuring out how lengthy it had been working.

“There is no extra mild at the finish of this narco-tunnel,” stated Randy Grossman, U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of California. “We will take down each subterranean smuggling route we find to maintain illicit medicine from reaching our streets and destroying our households and communities.”

By federal regulation, U.S. authorities should fill the U.S. side of tunnels with concrete after they're discovered.

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Associated Press author Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.