U.S.-Mexico drug tunnels growing security risk
04 Mar 2005 23:37:55 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Tim Gaynor
MONTERREY, Mexico, March 4 (Reuters) - U.S. authorities are finding an increased number of drug tunnels under the border with Mexico and warn they could be used to sneak terrorists into the United States.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and Border Patrol sources said on Friday they found two tunnels under the border in the past week, bringing the total to 13 in the past four years.
The figure compares to 19 tunnels or uncompleted shafts discovered at points along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border during the whole of the previous decade, according to ICE figures.
"Tunnel activity on the border is on the increase, and it represents a major vulnerability to national security," Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for ICE in San Diego, said by telephone.
"We know that they have existed for a long time for drug smuggling, but we are concerned that they might be used to smuggle terrorists or terror weapons into the United States," she added.
The Central Intelligence Agency warned last month that al Qaeda operatives had considered sneaking into the United states from Mexico.
More than a million illegal immigrants -- nearly all from Mexico and Central America -- were caught crossing the border last year, and many more get through.
GOING UNDERGROUND
Officials say the drive to tighten U.S. homeland security in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington has boosted prices charged by ever-more ingenious people traffickers.
"Smugglers are looking for alternative smuggling techniques and are increasingly avoiding the land borders by smuggling along the coast and now by going under ground," Mack said.
The latest cross-border tunnel was discovered by Border Patrol agents in Nogales, Ariz. on Tuesday as they made a routine search of a maze-like sewer network beneath the town, Tucson sector Border Patrol sources said.
The crudely hacked shaft ran 30 feet (9 meters) inside U.S. territory from a storm drain on the Mexican side of the border, but had yet to be completed.
Four days earlier, agents -- helped by civilian contractors equipped with ground radar -- discovered a tunnel linking Calexico, California, with neighboring Mexicali on the Mexican side of the border.
The carefully excavated tunnel emerged in the spare room of a three-bedroom home a block north of the border in a residential area of the town.
"It's the most elaborately constructed tunnel we've found to date on the California border. It had a sophisticated ventilation system and a cabling system that looks like it was used for some kind of intercom," Mack said.
"It appears that it was used to smuggle drugs, but we don't rule out the possibility that it had been used to smuggle people," she added.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04140592.htm
Large "DUH!" I guess it's hard to monitor those houses where 25-50 people appear to reside there and no one can tell who actually lives there or not!
Gee ya think?