Mexican authorities reported the discovery of 14 highly engineered 'narco-tunnels' on the US-Mexico border. Six of these tunnels are located in the city of Tijuana, in the state of Baja California.
According to the newspaper Milenio, a document from the Secretariat of National Defense of Mexico to which they had access ensures that they have detected these underpasses since 2016 and that they were built with steel beams to prevent collapses, they also have rails with forged metal cars, in addition to electrical energy systems and even ventilation.
The report comes seven years after drug trafficker Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán escaped through a tunnel from the maximum security prison in the Altiplano.
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One of the tunnels detected, explains Milenio, is located in a supposed abandoned farm on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz street, in the Nueva Tijuana neighborhood.
The second was built on another farm, less than 50 meters from the first.
The governments of Mexico and the United States believe that drugs and weapons flow through these hiding places, which are often guarded by heavily armed men
, and are even used for human trafficking or irregular migration.
[Record length narco tunnel discovered between Tijuana and San Diego. It had risers, rails and drainage]
Through transparency mechanisms, military authorities reported that Tijuana is the favorite city for narco-tunnel builders, since six of these passageways have been located there.
So far, six people have been arrested on charges of drug trafficking and are subject to legal proceedings.
In May, US authorities announced the discovery of a smuggling tunnel on the border with Mexico that is about six football fields long and led to a warehouse in an industrial zone in the United States.
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The secret passage from Tijuana to San Diego had rails, ventilation systems, electricity and reinforced walls, authorities said.
It was discovered
near the Otay Mesa border crossing
, in an area where other sophisticated tunnels have been found in the last two decades.
[Why tunnels under the US-Mexico border can be worth millions of dollars to traffickers]
US authorities said it is unknown how long the tunnel was in operation and how much, if any, drug was smuggled in undetected.
Agents seized 1,762 pounds (799 kilograms) of cocaine, 165 pounds (75 kilograms) of methamphetamine and 3.5 pounds (1.6 kilograms) of heroin as a result of the investigation.
"The sophistication and length of this particular tunnel demonstrates the extensive efforts that transnational criminal organizations undertake to facilitate cross-border smuggling," said Cardell T. Morant, Acting Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego.
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The tunnels are concentrated in an area where clay soil is conducive to digging and industrial deposits provide cover.
The latest tunnel was discovered by Mexican authorities in a Tijuana parking lot for cargo trucks, next to the city's airport.
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underground traffic
Despite the border wall between the United States and Mexico, drug trafficking does not stop underground.
Patrols from both countries find tunnel after tunnel, bored into the 80-year-old drainage system that connects the two countries 15 feet below ground.
In 2020 they located one that was dug by hand near the Mexican border in Nogales.
Agents located the exit of the two-foot-by-two-foot tunnel about a half-mile west of the DeConcini Port of Entry and about three feet north of the border.
The Mexican National Guard located its entrance on the floor of the existing Grand Avenue Drainage System in Mexico.
[Authorities Discover Sophisticated Tunnel the Size of Six Football Fields Between Tijuana and San Diego]
It was the 127th tunnel that had been discovered in the Tucson sector since 1990.
The narrow passage stretched about 10 feet and had no shoring, ventilation or lighting,
according to authorities.
"Nogales is the capital of cross-border tunnels between Mexico and the United States," Ricardo Santana Velázquez, consul general of Mexico in Nogales, Arizona, told The Washington Post.
Officials say cooperation between the US Border Patrol and the Mexican government plays a vital role in border security.
Cocaine often travels north through sewers: sometimes floating in bags on a river of sewage, others dragged with the merchandise through mud and excrement until they reach US soil.