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The 'narco-tunnels' emerge in the relationship between Mexico and the US

2022-05-16T20:20:10.418Z


The authorities find a passageway for drug trafficking in Tijuana, a few days after Ambassador Ken Salazar assured that there are more than 200 tunnels on the border


Elements of the Mexican Army guard the house where a 'narco-tunnel' was located, in Tijuana, on May 15, 2022. Omar Martínez (Cuartoscuro)

More than 300 meters long, 10 meters deep and completely illuminated.

This is the latest

narco

-tunnel that the authorities have discovered in Tijuana, on the border between Mexico and the United States.

The underground corridor was used to traffic drugs to San Diego, California, and has since been closed.

It is not a casual find.

"In this area there are over 200 tunnels along the border," warned US Ambassador Ken Salazar, during a visit last week to that border city.

The tunnel was discovered last weekend after a joint operation by the Mexican Army, the Tijuana Police and the Attorney General's Office.

The entrance is located under a house in the Nueva Tijuana neighborhood, a few meters from the Otay border crossing, precisely where Salazar made those statements.

The passageway, reinforced with metal beams, remains under the protection of the police and ministerial forces.

It has not been identified which criminal group used it, nor have there been any arrests.

Mexican authorities emphasized that communication with their US counterparts had been "close" and that bilateral collaboration had been key to finding the tunnel.

Less than 48 hours earlier, Salazar had made the same points.

"Working with the Mexican government we have a very good collaboration in trying to eradicate these tunnels, which should not be because that is where a lot of crime happens, a lot of suffering that we see," said the ambassador in statements collected by the weekly

Zeta

.

"This needs to stop," he added.

A passageway for drug trafficking located on May 14, 2022, in Tijuana, Mexico. Courtesy

Salazar's visit to Tijuana included a tour of a

narco-tunnel

, discovered in 2009. The pass is known as Gálvez, also behind the border wall, and was 270 meters long and 30 meters deep.

The construction of the structure was attributed to the Arellano Félix cartel, a criminal organization created in the 1980s and which dominated the movement of drugs to the United States in that plaza for decades.

After the tour, Salazar, senior US anti-narcotics officials and Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard held a press conference announcing a $4.2 billion investment to reinforce the border line.

Ebrard urged the authorities of both countries to "be more effective at the border against fentanyl, drugs and weapons that come and go on both sides."

“[It is intended] to ensure that this border is a place where people can walk from one place to another safely and where trade continues in a better way than we have now,” Salazar said.

Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushed through tough security checks to the point of virtually paralyzing cross-border trade.

More than 2,000 kilometers of the 3,000 between the two countries pass through that State.

After the historic claim of the White House to stop drug trafficking from Mexico, the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has brought to the negotiating table that the United States do the same with the smuggling of firearms.

More than 500,000 US weapons arrive in the Latin American country, according to Mexican authorities, who have been seeking since last year to prosecute the US arms industry.

Less than a week ago another tunnel made headlines in Culiacán, the stronghold of the Sinaloa Cartel, the organization historically led by Joaquín

El Chapo

Guzmán.

A young man who was sleeping on the sofa in his house fell suddenly after a hole opened in the ground.

The hole in the floor was attributed to the existence of the underground passageway, found in 2011.

El Chapo escaped in July 2015 from the Altiplano prison, a high-security prison in central Mexico, through a tunnel that took members of his criminal organization more than a year to build.

In the videos that were broadcast from his cell, the criminal leader is seen to disappear from one moment to another after getting into a hole in the floor.

Guzmán traveled more than a kilometer underground on a motorcycle.

The capo was captured in early 2016 and extradited to the United States a year later.

Before, Guzmán managed to evade several capture operations through networks of passages through the subsoil and the first tunnel attributed to him dates from 1989.

The

longest narco

-tunnel that has been discovered measured more than two kilometers and its discovery was released in January 2020. It had rails, air conditioning, an elevator to go down to the passageway and electricity.

The entrance was in Tijuana and the exit in San Diego.

"The sophistication of this tunnel demonstrates the determination and monetary resources of the cartels," the US border patrol said at the time.

Despite the spectacular nature of the announcement, there were no arrests or information on seizures, as with the last tunnel just discovered last weekend.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-05-16

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