Big cross-border tunnel found linking Tijuana, San Diego

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

The secret passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and ventilation methods, electricity and bolstered partitions, authorities said. It was found near San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing in an space where greater than a dozen other refined tunnels have been discovered in the last twenty years.

U.S. authorities said it was unknown how long the tunnel had been working and what amount of medication, if any, bought by means of undetected. They seized 1,762 pounds (799 kg) of cocaine, 165 pounds (75 kg) of meth and 3.5 pounds (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 one of the crucial fortified stretches of the border, illustrating the limitations of border partitions. Whereas thought of efficient against small, crudely constructed tunnels known as “gopher holes,” partitions are no match for more refined passages that run deeper underground.

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

The kind of medication seized might signal a shift from the multi-ton loads of marijuana that were typically found in discoveries earlier than California legalized pot for leisure use in 2019.

Laborious drugs, similar to heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl, are sometimes smuggled through official border crossings from Mexico as a result of their small measurement and lack of odor make them troublesome to detect. But tunnels give smugglers a bonus of being able to carry big loads at lightning speed.

The tunnel exited the United States in a nondescript warehouse named “Amistad Park” on a avenue that is busy with giant semitrailers in the course of the day but 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 just lately used to stash medicine, officers began making traffic stops of automobiles that had been there or at a warehouse close to the border, turning up containers full of cocaine, according to a federal felony grievance filed in San Diego.

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

Authorities have discovered about 15 refined 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 present 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 stated in 2020 that they're typically found in California and Arizona and related to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

Authorities declined to hyperlink the latest tunnel to any specific cartel. They claimed victory regardless of not realizing how lengthy it had been working.

“There is no more gentle at the end of this narco-tunnel,” stated Randy Grossman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. “We are going to take down every subterranean smuggling route we discover to keep illicit drugs from reaching our streets and destroying our families and communities.”

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

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Associated Press author Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.