Huge cross-border tunnel found linking Tijuana, San Diego

SAN DIEGO (AP) — U.S. authorities on Monday introduced the invention of a significant drug smuggling tunnel — running in regards to the length of a six football fields — from Mexico to a warehouse in an industrial space 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 area the place more than a dozen different refined tunnels have been discovered within the last 20 years.

U.S. authorities mentioned it was unknown how long the tunnel had been operating and what amount of drugs, if any, received via undetected. They seized 1,762 kilos (799 kg) of cocaine, 165 pounds (75 kg) of meth and three.5 kilos (1.6 kg) of heroin in reference to the investigation.

Six people, ages 31 to 55, had 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 constraints of border walls. While considered efficient towards small, crudely built tunnels referred to as “gopher holes,” walls are not any match for more sophisticated 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 stories deep.

The kind of medicine seized could signal a shift from the multi-ton a great deal of marijuana that were usually found in discoveries before California legalized pot for leisure use in 2019.

Laborious medicine, comparable to heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl, are typically smuggled through official border crossings from Mexico because their small dimension and lack of odor make them troublesome to detect. But tunnels give smugglers a bonus of having the ability to carry big masses at lightning speed.

The tunnel exited the US in a nondescript warehouse named “Amistad Park” on a street that's busy with giant semitrailers in the course of 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 home that was not too long ago used to stash drugs, officers began making visitors stops of automobiles that had been there or at a warehouse near the border, turning up packing containers full of cocaine, in keeping with a federal felony grievance filed in San Diego.

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

Authorities have discovered about 15 sophisticated 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 area, where clay-like soil is conducive to digging and warehouses provide cover.

The cross-border passages date back to the early Nineties and have been used primarily to smuggle multi-ton a great deal of marijuana. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said 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 regardless of not knowing how lengthy it had been operating.

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

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

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Associated Press author Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.