Huge 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 — running concerning the size of a six football fields — from Mexico to a warehouse in an industrial area within the U.S.

The secret passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and air flow methods, electrical energy and strengthened walls, authorities said. It was found close to San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing in an space where greater than a dozen other refined tunnels have been found within the final 20 years.

U.S. authorities said it was unknown how lengthy the tunnel had been operating and what amount of medication, if any, obtained via undetected. They seized 1,762 pounds (799 kg) of cocaine, 165 pounds (75 kg) of meth and 3.5 kilos (1.6 kg) of heroin in reference to the investigation.

Six folks, ages 31 to 55, were 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 constraints of border partitions. Whereas considered efficient in opposition to small, crudely built tunnels known as “gopher holes,” walls are not any match for extra sophisticated passages that run deeper underground.

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

The kind of medication seized might 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.

Onerous medicine, equivalent to heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl, are usually smuggled through official border crossings from Mexico as a result of their small measurement and lack of odor make them difficult to detect. But tunnels give smugglers an advantage of with the ability to carry huge hundreds at lightning velocity.

The tunnel exited the United States in a nondescript warehouse named “Amistad Park” on a road that's busy with large semitrailers during the day however 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 house that was lately used to stash drugs, officials began making visitors stops of automobiles that had been there or at a warehouse close to the border, turning up bins stuffed with cocaine, in accordance with a federal felony criticism filed in San Diego.

They raided the properties — finding no other medication at the warehouse, but a tunnel opening carved into the cement flooring, federal prosecutors mentioned.

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

Many tunnels, together with the one announced Monday, are in San Diego’s Otay Mesa industrial space, the place 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 generally found in California and Arizona and related to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

Authorities declined to link the latest tunnel to any particular cartel. They claimed victory regardless of not knowing how long it had been working.

“There isn't any more light at the end of this narco-tunnel,” mentioned Randy Grossman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. “We'll take down each subterranean smuggling route we discover to keep illicit medication from reaching our streets and destroying our households and communities.”

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

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Related Press writer Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.