U.S. authorities, in a shocking discovery, announced about the longest smuggling tunnel ever found on the Southwest border, the tunnel stretches more than three-quarters of mile from an industrial site in Tijuana, Mexico, to the San Diego area.
The tunnel reportedly, featured an extensive rail cart system, forced air ventilation, high voltage electrical cables and panels, an elevator at the tunnel entrance and a drainage system.
While there were no arrests, no drugs claimed off the site and no confirmed exit point in the U.S., the length of the tunnel equalling to more than 14 football fields, stunned authorities.
This one blows past (the second-longest),” said Lance LeNoir, a Border Patrol operations supervisor. “We never really thought they had the moxie to go that far. They continue to surprise me.”
The tunnel exposes limitations of President Donald Trump’s border wall, which stretches several feet underground in the area and is considered effective against small, crudely built tunnels often called “gopher holes.” The one announced Wednesday was found about 70 feet (21 meters) underground, well below the wall.
“While subterranean tunnels are not a new occurrence along the California-Mexico border, the sophistication and length of this particular tunnel demonstrates the time-consuming efforts transnational criminal organizations will undertake to facilitate cross-border smuggling,” said Cardell T. Morant, Acting Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) San Diego in the statement.
“The sophistication and length of the tunnel demonstrates the time-consuming efforts transnational criminal organisations will undertake to facilitate cross-border smuggling,” CardellMorant, added.
Agents discovered several hundred sandbags blocking a suspected former exit of the tunnel in San Diego’s Otay Mesa industrial warehouse area. It went under several warehouses in Otay Mesa, where sophisticated tunnels have typically ended, and extended into open fields.
According to U.S. authorities they are confident that the tunnel exited in San Diego at one time, based on its trajectory.
LeNoir, a veteran on the multiagency task force of tunnel investigators known as “tunnel rats,” said he made his way through about 50 feet (15 meters) of sugar sacks blocking the tunnel but couldn’t go any farther. An incomplete offshoot of the tunnel that extended 3,529 feet (1,090 meters) suggested to authorities that smugglers had plugged an initial exit point and were building another.
In 2016, Border Patrol agents in San Diego confiscated nearly 83,000 kilograms of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin from the three ports of entry in the area. The next closest border sector in terms of drug seizures was Laredo, Texas, which covers twice as much land and where agents confiscated 10,000 fewer kilograms of drugs, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
While the majority of smuggling attempts happen in the ports of entry, the biggest loads of drugs enter San Diego through tunnels. The ones equipped with rails can carry packages as big as 35 tons. Border Patrol agents in San Diego agree that they need more people and funding for investigative work.
