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Smugglers Build Underground World

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD,

The New York Times

Posted: 2007-12-07 13:17:42

Filed Under: Nation News

TECATE, Calif. (Dec. 6) — The tunnel opening cut into the floor of a shipping container here drops three levels, each accessible by ladders, first a metal one and then two others fashioned from wood pallets. The tunnel stretches 1,300 feet to the south, crossing the Mexican border some 50 feet below ground and proceeding to a sky-blue office building in sight of the steel-plated border fence.

Three or four feet wide and six feet high, the passageway is illuminated by compact fluorescent bulbs (wired to the Mexican side), supported by carefully placed wooden beams and kept dry by two pumps. The neatly squared walls, carved through solid rock, bear the signs of engineering skill and professional drilling tools.

Shrink-wrapped bundles of marijuana, nearly 14,000 pounds worth $5.6 million in street sales, were found in the shipping container and in a trailer next to it, making clear the tunnel’s purpose: to serve as another major smuggling corridor. Found Monday here in Tecate, it is the latest of 56 cross-border tunnels found in the Southwest since the onset of additional guards and fencing aboveground after Sept. 11, 2001.

“I’m never alarmed when they are found,” said a senior investigator with a task force of federal law enforcement agencies still combing the scene Tuesday. “I am alarmed we don’t find them enough.”

The authorities believe that the increased border enforcement has helped deter illegal immigrant traffic and allowed agents to make more drug seizures. But they acknowledge that it has also been driving traffickers to redouble their efforts to find alternative ways of breaching the border.

It is not just tunnels. Immigration agents in San Diego say they are concerned about a spate of rickety boats found in the last year along San Diego County beaches, some having just dropped off illegal immigrants. People smuggled through official border crossings have been discovered tucked into hollowed-out dashboards in vans and trucks and in perilous pockets in vehicle undercarriages.

“It’s like squeezing a balloon,” said Michael Unzueta, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in charge of the San Diego area. “The air has got to go somewhere.”

But the tunnels are now found with alarming regularity, and often just under the noses of law enforcement officers. This latest one is a block from a Border Patrol station and next to a hill that agents often use to watch for illegal immigrant traffic. And in September, a Border Patrol vehicle became stuck in a sinkhole in San Luis, Ariz., 50 yards north of a border fence, that turned out to be a collapsed segment of a smuggling tunnel under construction.

A total of 69 such tunnels have been discovered — 68 along the Southwest border, the other at the Canadian border with Washington State — since the authorities began keeping records on them in 1990. Of that total, 80 percent have been found, mostly through informant tips, since the terrorist attacks, when border enforcement was significantly stepped up. The longest, found last year in the Otay Mesa district of San Diego, stretched nearly half a mile.

Because of concerns that terrorists could adopt the tactic to smuggle radioactive and chemical materials into the United States, a military team checks each underground passageway discovered; no residue from such materials has ever been found.

Most of the tunnels are of the “gopher” variety, dug quickly and probably by small-time smugglers who may be engaged in moving either people or limited amounts of drugs across the border. But more than a dozen have been fairly elaborate affairs like this one, with lighting, drainage, ventilation, pulleys for moving loads and other features that point to big spending by drug cartels. Engineers have clearly been consulted in the construction of these detailed corridors.

The tunnel here has drawn additional scrutiny because just hours after it was discovered, the deputy police chief of the twin city across the border, Tecate, Mexico, was killed in a fusillade at his home, in what appeared to be a cartel assassination. The deputy chief had helped find the passage’s Mexican end.

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A Border Patrol agent on routine patrol discovered the tunnel when his drug-sniffing dog reacted to the smell of marijuana several hundred feet away. When the agent entered the container, the Border Patrol said, a man with a pistol in his waistband disappeared deep into the opening.

The tunnel, like the others found, will be sealed at the border and eventually filled with cement slurry.

Though few people have been prosecuted for activities related to the construction of these tunnels, a federal law enacted this year makes it a felony to design or build one, or to participate in smuggling involving it.

There was no answer at the telephone number listed for the owner of the lot where the tunnel was discovered on the American side. But The San Diego Union-Tribune identified him as Flavio Aguirre, an auto broker in Tecate, Mexico, who told the paper that he rented the site a couple of years ago to men who said they operated a furniture-moving company.

The building where the tunnel opens on the Mexican side has been closed by the police. People who work nearby say that drug trafficking is common in the area but that they never saw anything unusual at the building, at least during working hours.

“They are all over here,” one man said of drug smugglers, “but you don’t see anything.”

2007-12-07 08:52:50

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535 comments

LifeZing 11:14:01 PM Dec 11 2007

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BLOW THE SOCKS OFF, AMERICA.
SMUGGLING? DOPE IMPORT? HEY, IF YOUR SON NEEDS A JOB...he can train as a ....hitman....in Louisiana. SMUGGLING NEGROS, SMUGGLING IMPORTS, thunder road white lighening back when, IMPORTING chinese babies, lil girls...for entertainment southern style in negro land. YOU and your secrecy. THOSE AROUND YOU in their insanities, just like yours but under paid. AMERICA IS A MELTING POT OF NOTHINB BUT CRIME AND EXPLOITATION. AMERICA IS NOTHING BUT A MELTING POT OF CRIME AND EXPLOITAION. M U R D E R A S S O C I A T E D, un-united. YU ARE NOT THE USA, you are the elite few that kill, kill, AND KILL SOME MORE....with incredible financial reward.
When the world of real people are D.E.A.D. what will your life have been worth against them? nothing...........die, suicidals........and you will after you kill all of the rest of the world. do excuse me, i'm working on a manuscript right now....you know, truth and reality....something yo will not ever kn

LifeZing 11:14:01 PM Dec 11 2007

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LifeZing 11:13:56 PM Dec 11 2007

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Horseman763 07:51:18 PM Dec 09 2007

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Border patrol should use ground sensing radar to detect these trenches they should do the whole border every few days. And when they find a tunnel, they should not run anyone outm but just fill ti with concrete or mustard gas. I am tired of Illegals. Have you turned on in today?

Buzzm1 07:32:41 PM Dec 09 2007

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It seems that each tunnel they find is a bit more sophisticated than the one before.

The cartels have a very large number of growing operations here in the U.S.. I live in the Bay Area and they have busted at least a half docen large plots of marijuana in the mountains here this year.

The more fence they put along the border, along with vehicle barriers, plus enforcement here in the U.S. will laower the number of illegal immigrants and allow the drug problem to be addressed. It's going to require our military at the border to stop the drugs.

GEEVEE44 11:08:09 AM Dec 09 2007

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Its time to set up work camps for all illegal aliens caught and arrested

joeshmo3993 10:33:00 AM Dec 09 2007

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Plus you can't blame the Mexicans for wanting their land back. America took all that land in the Mexican cessation of 1848. Basically all of the American Southwest was once part of Mexico.

joeshmo3993 10:19:00 AM Dec 09 2007

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IF they leagalized Marijuana then the border guards could focus more on fighting illeagal immigration. Why should the big corporations make all the money pushing their mind altering drugs when small farmers produce a better product that is environmentally friendly? Didn't God say in the bible that man has dominion over all the PLANTS and animals of the world?

Proof of the quality of the natural product over the synthetic garbage the pharmicutical companies push is apparent in Mexico cause all you have to do to get the legal stuff is walk into a Pharmacy and the give it to you. People perfer the natural product. It is a gift from God.

Empower51 10:09:49 AM Dec 09 2007

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MCHELL -- BE CAREFUL ABOUT WHAT YOU WISH FOR!!!
OUR BORDERS ARE BEING DELIBERATELY ERASED, THE POPULATIONS ARE BEING BLENDED, AMERICA'S CHILDREN ARE HAVING THEIR EDUCATIONS DESTROYED AND THEY ARE BEING GROOMED FOR THIRD WORLD EXISTENCE: LESS EDUCATION, LESS SKILLS, LOWER WAGES.
RESEARCH THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION - THE GOAL OF JORGE'S SECURITY AND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT MADE WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT OR ADVICE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
OPEN YOUR EYES -- THE WEAK DOLLAR, LOWER WAGES, LOSS OF JOBS, ILLEGAL INVASION, ETC., ARE ALL PART OF THE ELITE'S PLAN TO MERGE THE U.S. WITH MEXICO AND CANADA INTO A 2 CLASS THIRD WORLD NATION LIKE MEXICO. AMERICANS WILL SACRIFICE THEIR QUALITY OF LIFE TO LIVE IN A CESSPOOL LIKE MEXICO!!!

Empower51 10:04:58 AM Dec 09 2007

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Daina, Daina, Daina:

HOW MANY ILLEGALS WOULD BE HERE WITHOUT THE FREEBIES???

THEY DROP THOSE ANCHORS TO GET THE CHECKS, COMMIT IDENTITY THEFT, AND WORK OFF THE BOOKS.

AMERICANS ARE SO OVER IT!!!

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535 comments