Yet again, the Border Patrol has shut down a cross-border narcotics smuggling tunnel. The latest subterranean construction project linked a residence in Tijuana, Mexico, to a building in a section of San Diego, California.
Since 1993, almost 100 tunnels have been detected and shut down, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported in its release on the latest find.
In January, agents found a tunnel that ran from Juarez in Mexico into a storm drain in El Paso, Texas. It was used to move illegal aliens and sex-traffic women.
Border agents uncovered the tunnel in a commercial warehouse in Otay Mesa. It was incomplete, ran more than 1,000 feet inside the U.S., and was “highly sophisticated,” CBP reported.
Agents with the San Diego Sector Tunnel Team found the tunnel running under the border’s Otay Mesa Port of Entry. “Based on preliminary indications, the tunnel had a projected exit point near or within a nearby commercial warehouse space,” CBP continued:
The investigation revealed the tunnel was equipped with electrical wiring, lighting, ventilation systems, and a track system designed for transporting large quantities of contraband.
When agents made the first entry into the tunnel, they encountered multiple makeshift barricades. These barricades were placed haphazardly by the tunnel workers in an apparent effort to impede agents’ southbound progress and the eventual identification of the tunnel’s origin.
Mapping the tunnel found it to be 2,918 feet long — more than half a mile. It was 42 inches high, 28 inches wide and 50 feet underground at its deepest. Mexican authorities helped the Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) find its origin in a home in the Nueva Tijuana neighborhood, reported CBP:
Mexican authorities served a warrant at the location and found the entrance to the tunnel had recently been concealed by freshly laid tile.
In the San Diego area alone, agents have found and destroyed more than 95 tunnels since 1993. That’s an average of three tunnels per year. Federal contractors will destroy the tunnel by filling it with concrete.
The San Diego area isn’t the only target for tunneling narco-terrorists. So also is Texas.
In January this year, El Paso Sector agents found a finished cross-border tunnel from Mexico when they inspected a storm drain, CBP reported.
The tunnel ran from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso’s storm-drain system through a 3-foot-square entry hole covered with a metal plate. The tunnel was 6 feet by 4 feet, and equipped with lighting and ventilation. Bracing it were wooden beams.
In 2020, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported that it had found the longest tunnel ever after a multi-year investigation. Like the tunnel discovered this week, it originated in Tijuana near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. Mexican authorities began mapping it in 2019. DEA reported:
Concealed by a small industrial building, the tunnel travels north into the United States, bending slightly west and extending an astonishing 4,068 feet from the border, with a total length of 4,309 feet — over three-quarters of a mile. The next longest tunnel in the United States, discovered in San Diego in 2014, was 2,966 feet long.
The tunnel was 5.5 feet tall by 2 feet wide, with an average depth of 70 feet below ground. It, too, was a remarkably sophisticated construction project. The tunnel contained “an extensive rail/cart system, forced air ventilation, high voltage electrical cables and panels, an elevator at the tunnel entrance, and a complex drainage system,” CBP reported.
Even worse, an offshoot from that tunnel was found 3,529 feet into the United States.
Sources told immigration reporter Ali Bradley that more than 800 people “smuggled through that tunnel weekly, which included women from Venezuela who were being sex trafficked.”
Bradley reported:
Migrants on TikTok encouraged others to use the underground pathway as a quick and easy route into the U.S. [with] some reporting they used it more than a year ago.
Former HSI Special Agent @VictorAvilaTX tells me the tunnel route cost more because it’s a clear and easy path — He says it was likely being exploited by illegal immigrants from special interest countries who had more to lose if they were caught. He says the people using the tunnel aren’t the ones who are self-surrendering to agents — They become “gotaways.”
Last year, the House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Subterranean Border Defense Act, sponsored by Democrat Lou Correa of California and Republican Eli Crane of Arizona. Since 1990, Correa reported in a news release,
law enforcement officials have discovered more than 140 tunnels that have breached the U.S. border, with an 80% increase in tunnel activity occurring since 2008.
18 U.S. Code 555 punishes the building of, knowledge by a landowner of, or use of border tunnels, with prison terms of up to 10, 20, and 40 years in prison.