Big cross-border tunnel found linking Tijuana, San Diego

SAN DIEGO (AP) — U.S. authorities on Monday announced the discovery of a significant drug smuggling tunnel — running in regards to the length of a six soccer fields — from Mexico to a warehouse in an industrial area in the U.S.

The secret passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and ventilation methods, electricity and reinforced walls, authorities mentioned. It was discovered near 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 twenty years.

U.S. authorities said it was unknown how long the tunnel had been operating and what amount of medication, if any, acquired by means of undetected. They seized 1,762 kilos (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 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 restrictions of border walls. While considered efficient against small, crudely constructed tunnels known as “gopher holes,” walls are not any match for more refined passages that run deeper underground.

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

The type of medication seized could sign a shift from the multi-ton loads of marijuana that were usually present in discoveries before California legalized pot for leisure use in 2019.

Exhausting drugs, comparable to heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl, are sometimes smuggled by means of official border crossings from Mexico because their small size and lack of odor make them difficult to detect. However tunnels give smugglers a bonus of with the ability to carry big hundreds at lightning velocity.

The tunnel exited the United States in a nondescript warehouse named “Amistad Park” on a street that is busy with massive semitrailers through the day however quiet at evening. On Monday, armed guards watched over a small shaft with a ladder that descended into the tunnel.

After staking out a house that was not too long ago used to stash drugs, officials started making site visitors stops of automobiles that had been there or at a warehouse close to the border, turning up bins stuffed with cocaine, according to a federal legal complaint filed in San Diego.

They raided the properties — finding no different drugs at the warehouse, however a tunnel opening carved into the cement flooring, federal prosecutors mentioned.

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

Many tunnels, together with 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 again to the early Nineteen Nineties and have been used primarily to smuggle multi-ton loads of marijuana. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration mentioned in 2020 that they are usually found in California and Arizona and related to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

Authorities declined to hyperlink the most recent tunnel to any particular cartel. They claimed victory despite not realizing how lengthy it had been working.

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

By federal law, U.S. authorities must fill the U.S. facet of tunnels with concrete after they're discovered.

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Related Press author Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.