Tunnel Across Border No Shock to Drug Agents

SAN DIEGO —  For years, American drug agents heard whispers about the existence of one or more tunnels for ferrying drugs beneath the U.S.-Mexico border in the remote, boulder-strewn reaches of eastern San Diego County.

This week, aided by leads from an earlier drug seizure, they found such a passage: a tunnel the length of four football fields, complete with electricity, ventilation pipes and rails for hauling carts of contraband under the border fence in a rural stretch of eastern San Diego County. The agents also reported finding 500 pounds of marijuana at the mouth of the tunnel on the U.S. side of the border.

Authorities said Thursday that they think smugglers used the 1,200-foot-long subterranean route for three years or more, shuttling perhaps tons of marijuana and cocaine to a house on a former pig ranch in the community of Tierra del Sol, about 55 miles east of downtown San Diego. Officials said there was no indication it was used to smuggle illegal immigrants.

The discovery of the 4-by-4-foot tunnel on Wednesday added a strange chapter to border lore and, officials said, could stand out as a major law-enforcement coup. Though the passage is not the first to be unearthed along the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said it was noteworthy for its sophistication and for how long it had been in use.

“I think it’s one of the most significant finds ever on the Southwest border,” said Errol J. Chavez, special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in San Diego.

Agents displayed aerial photographs of the U.S. property, a shaded barn-style house where the tunnel ended beneath a lift-up staircase, 1,000 feet north of the border. The photographs also showed a single-story tile-roofed home in Tecate, Mexico, that held the tunnel’s opposite opening, about 200 feet south of the fence.

The builders took great pains to disguise their project, hiding the U.S. entrance beneath the false floor of a hidden safe and the Mexican opening in a fireplace piled with ashes. The tunnel was lined most of the way with wood paneling and lighted by electricity. Plastic pipe carried fresh air to the deepest part of the tunnel, 35 feet below the surface.

Smugglers apparently used rail carts to move their cargo and may have done so recently. Chavez said the 500-pound marijuana stash appeared fresh.

“[The tunnel] was very sophisticated,” Chavez said during a news conference at the DEA office in San Diego. “It was very secure and obviously used for a long time.”

Chavez said that no arrests were made on the U.S. side, but that some could come soon. He said agents, who continued to search the property, were seeking to determine the identity of a man who leased the house from the owners, who were believed to be unaware of the smuggling enterprise. Three people initially detained on the Mexican side were also thought to be innocent of smuggling.

Chavez said the smugglers probably built the tunnel after a 10-foot border fence went up in 1995 as part of the U.S. government’s border crackdown known as Operation Gatekeeper. The remote area was long known as a smuggling haven. Officials suspect that the operators paid a toll to the Arellano Felix drug cartel, based in Tijuana, for permission to move drugs through the gang’s turf.

The drug organization has been the target of U.S. and Mexican authorities for years. Ramon Arellano Felix is on the FBI’s list of most-wanted fugitives, and his brother Benjamin also is sought on U.S. charges. U.S. and Mexican officials are investigating whether Ramon, considered the gang’s top enforcer, was killed in a shootout in Mazatlan last month.

Tunnels have been a staple of border smugglers over the years. A tunnel estimated to have cost $1 million to build was used to smuggle cocaine from Agua Prieta, Mexico, to Douglas, Ariz. Discovered in 1990, the tunnel was elaborately camouflaged on the Mexican side to look like a game room with a hydraulic lift that hoisted a pool table and concrete slab that concealed the southern entrance. The electrically lighted tunnel was 273 feet long, lined in concrete and had sump pumps to prevent flooding.

An unfinished quarter-mile tunnel built by drug kingpin Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman was discovered near the Otay Mesa port of entry in San Diego in 1993. That tunnel made headlines again in 1998 when Border Patrol officials suspected it had been reopened to smuggle undocumented immigrants onto U.S. soil. The mystery of its reopening was never solved conclusively, but the tunnel was sealed.

Last year, customs agents found a tunnel beneath the border leading to an unoccupied house in Nogales, Ariz. Tunnels had been discovered there previously, making use of a system of drainage ditches that crossed the border there.

Chavez said the discovery of the Tierra del Sol tunnel came during an unrelated investigation stemming from a big drug seizure in San Diego six months ago. He said it confirmed persistent reports of tunnels and may hint at others yet undetected.

“There have been numerous rumors about tunnels throughout Southern California,” Chavez said. “We still hear rumors that there are more tunnels out there. We make every attempt to locate the tunnels.

“But because of how difficult it is to find tunnels underground, the technology that is required, the expense to locate them, it has been extremely difficult.”