America


OPERATION UNDERGROUND Left: A tunnel in Otay Mesa, Mexico, with lighting, wood flooring, and an elevator. Above: A tunnel found by the Mexican army in Tijuana. Below: A tunnel exits on the U.S. side of the border in a San Diego warehouse.


Drug Tunnels Have Feds Digging for Answers


Elaborate underground drug-running passageways are engineering feats of wonder.


T BY TAMARA AUDI


he federal agents who spend their days hunting for tunnels used for smuggling marijuana from Mexico know the subtle signs of an illegal passageway hidden amid the labyrinth of ware-


houses in Otay Mesa, just outside Tijuana. They also know large tunnels cost about $1 million each


to build and can take up to nine months to fi nish. And they know the suspected cartel kingpin allegedly behind the most sophisticated passageways — including one with an electrifi ed rail system — that have been popping up on the border at an alarming rate. But a stubborn mystery remains at the heart of the drug-tunnel phenomenon: the identities of the people who designed and built these engineering feats. As border agents focus on investigating and dismantling


networks that fund and use the tunnels, tracking down the engineers is crucial, federal agents say. “I would liken that to winning the law-enforcement


lottery,” said Derek Benner, the special agent in charge of investigations for U.S. Immigration and Customs


30 NEWSMAX | MAY 2013


Enforcement in San Diego. “These guys would just be a wealth of information for us.” Drug smugglers have been burrowing under the bor-


der for two decades. Since 1990, 159 tunnels have been discovered crossing into the United States from Mexico. Construction boomed as border security tightened, forcing smugglers underground. In the past four years, the building of illegal tunnels increased by 80 percent, according to a 2012 federal report. The most recent was discovered in Tecate, Mexico,


about 35 miles east of San Diego. Mexican army offi cials found it last December. It crossed into California but an exit hadn’t been built yet, federal offi cials here said. The tunnels are primarily used to smuggle pot, but U.S. Homeland Security offi cials say the passageways pose a “signifi cant security vulnerability” and could also be used to smuggle weapons or cash across the border. Most are found in Arizona and California. A large num-


ber of them are just rudimentary holes, and many tap into existing cross-border drainage systems. The most sophisti- cated tunnels tend to pop up in Otay Mesa, a busy border


TUNNEL/SANDY HUFFAKER/GETTY IMAGES / INSETS/AP IMAGES


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