Big cross-border tunnel discovered linking Tijuana, San Diego

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

The key passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and ventilation techniques, electrical energy and reinforced walls, authorities said. It was found close to San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing in an space the place greater than a dozen different refined tunnels have been discovered within the last twenty years.

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

Six folks, 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 limitations of border partitions. While considered effective in opposition to small, crudely constructed tunnels known as “gopher holes,” walls aren't any match for more sophisticated passages that run deeper underground.

The latest passage, found Friday, ran one-third of a mile (532 m) to Tijuana. It was 4 toes (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 typically found in discoveries before California legalized pot for leisure use in 2019.

Exhausting medicine, akin to heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl, are typically smuggled by way of official border crossings from Mexico as a result of their small measurement and lack of odor make them troublesome to detect. However tunnels give smugglers an advantage of having the ability to carry enormous hundreds at lightning velocity.

The tunnel exited the USA in a nondescript warehouse named “Amistad Park” on a avenue that's busy with massive semitrailers through the day but quiet at night. 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, officials started making visitors stops of automobiles that had been there or at a warehouse close to the border, turning up bins stuffed with cocaine, in keeping with a federal legal grievance 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 found about 15 sophisticated 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, the place clay-like soil is conducive to digging and warehouses provide cover.

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 typically present in California and Arizona and associated with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

Authorities declined to hyperlink the latest tunnel to any particular cartel. They claimed victory regardless of not figuring out how long it had been operating.

“There is no more gentle at the finish of this narco-tunnel,” said Randy Grossman, U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of California. “We are going to take down every subterranean smuggling route we find to maintain illicit medicine from reaching our streets and destroying our families and communities.”

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

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Related Press writer Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.