Tunnel Brought Mexican Drugs to America

A COMPLEX 1,200ft tunnel running under the Mexican border was used to smuggle billions of dollars worth of drugs into the United States on railway tracks, according to investigators.

The tunnel was one of the longest and most carefully constructed ever found and appeared to have been used for years. Drug enforcement officials said they suspected that it was the work of the notorious Tijuana cartel, headed by the Arellano Felix brothers.

“It’s one of the most significant ever along the southwestern border,” Errol Chavez, head of the San Diego office of the Drug Enforcement Agency, said. “They used this tunnel to smuggle billions of dollars worth of cocaine, marijuana and other drugs into the United States for several years.”

The tunnel was 4ft wide and 4ft high, reinforced with wood and equipped with electric lights and 6in plastic pipes that provided air. Carts were trundled through the tunnel on steel rails.

Investigators did not say how they found the tunnel, which ran 20ft below the ground from a ranch house on a pig farm 1,000ft from the border in the Californian town of Tierra del Sol, a dust-blown, rural, mountain community about 60 miles east of San Diego on the United States-Mexico border. The other entrance was in a house 200ft inside Mexico.

Agents went to the California house this week and located the tunnel entrance beneath a false floor inside a cupboard. There was nobody in the house and no arrests have been made. Authorities declined to say how they discovered the tunnel, except to say that it was part of an ongoing investigation.

A large quantity of freshly packaged marijuana was found in the tunnel, indicating that it was still being employed. Investigators said that the smugglers were believed to have kept a constant stream of drugs flowing through the tunnel to waiting vans, which distributed them to Los Angeles and beyond.

It is believed that the tunnel was chiefly used to import marijuana and other drugs, but may also have been a thoroughfare for illegal immigrants.

This should surprise no one...I'd be surprised if there aren't hundreds more. For years, the North Koreans have built invasion tunnels under the border with South Korea. Some of these have been big enough for three tanks or trucks to sit side by side, ready and waiting for the order to roll beneath the DMZ, and into the South. What bothers me most about this story is not that drugs are being smuggled in through this (and the others that are surely there) tunnel, but the terrorists, the weapons, etc., that are likely flowing in, too.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

A non traditional definition of the underground railroad. There are probability nine more for every one that gets discovered. People in LE I used to talk to would tell me busts are selective and timed around elections and other events to promote certain politicians and police cheifs. The war on drugs acomplishes nothing more than raising the profits of drug smugglers for taking risks. You have got to ask yourself, why do drug kingpins make billions of dollars smuggling marijuana when it can be grown in just about any part of the world ?

I've lived in Southern Arizona for almost 15 years. Every couple of years the local papers carry articles about tunnels under the border in Douglas or Nogales. The last one I remember had many of the same features as in this tunnel - the wood reinforced walls, lights, and air. The floor in this one was concrete - no rails.

That's a LOT of dirt to move, where did they take it and why didn't anyone notice what would have been truckloads of dirt being hauled away AND truckloads of supplies being carried in (concrete and cart rails)? Border patrol? What a joke.

The war on drugs acomplishes nothing more than raising the profits of drug smugglers for taking risks.

Apparently some of them also get much shorter sentences.

"In 1988 Congress passed another, pre-election Anti-Drug Law. One of the provisions was urged by the Department of Justice to simply close a little loophole. The change was to apply the mandatory sentences of 1986, intended for high level traffickers, to anyone who was a member of a drug trafficking conspiracy. The effect of this amendment was to make everyone in a conspiracy liable for every act of the conspiracy. If a defendant is simply the doorman at a crack house, he is liable for all the crack ever sold from that crack house -- indeed, he is liable for all of the crack ever sold by the organization that runs the crack house. After the conspiracy amendment was enacted the prison population swelled. Within 6 years, the number of drug cases in federal prisons increased by 300%. From 1986 to 1998 it was up by 450%."

"One result of the conspiracy amendment is that low-level traffickers can get very long sentences. They can also be the victims of lies by codefendants who have figured out how to cut a deal and manipulate the sentencing laws to their advantage. High-level traffickers often get lower sentences than Congress anticipated. The top organizer is in a position, for example, to identify and testify against the people who launder money for him at a bank, corrupt police officers, airport or shipping personnel, and others. When a top organizer faces a very long mandatory or Guideline sentence, he is able to offer "substantial assistance" and get a low sentence. Examples of such deals were the much reduced sentences obtained by high level cocaine traffickers who testified against former Panamanian strongman, General Manuel Noriega, when the U.S. government prosecuted him for cocaine trafficking."

Source: Federal Bureau of Prisons Quick Facts

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