Large cross-border tunnel found linking Tijuana, San Diego

SAN DIEGO (AP) — U.S. authorities on Monday announced the invention of a serious drug smuggling tunnel — operating about the length of a six soccer fields — from Mexico to a warehouse in an industrial area in the U.S.

The secret passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and air flow methods, electricity and strengthened walls, authorities stated. It was found close to San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing in an space the place greater than a dozen other sophisticated tunnels have been found in the last two decades.

U.S. authorities stated it was unknown how lengthy the tunnel had been working and what quantity of medication, if any, bought by undetected. They seized 1,762 kilos (799 kg) of cocaine, 165 kilos (75 kg) of meth and three.5 pounds (1.6 kg) of heroin in connection with the investigation.

Six folks, ages 31 to 55, had 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 constraints of border partitions. While considered efficient towards small, crudely built tunnels called “gopher holes,” walls aren't any match for extra refined passages that run deeper underground.

The most recent 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 tales deep.

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

Laborious medication, corresponding to heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl, are typically smuggled through official border crossings from Mexico as a result of their small size and lack of odor make them troublesome to detect. But tunnels give smugglers an advantage of being able to carry enormous masses at lightning pace.

The tunnel exited the United States in a nondescript warehouse named “Amistad Park” on a road that's busy with giant semitrailers throughout 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 house that was lately used to stash medication, officers started making site visitors stops of vehicles that had been there or at a warehouse near the border, turning up bins filled with cocaine, in accordance with a federal legal complaint filed in San Diego.

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

Authorities have found about 15 refined 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 cowl.

The cross-border passages date again to the early 1990s 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 present in California and Arizona and associated with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

Authorities declined to link the most recent tunnel to any specific cartel. They claimed victory despite not realizing how lengthy it had been working.

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

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

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Associated Press writer Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.