U.S. authorities have discovered a secret cross-border running the length of football fields in the California desert, following a major marijuana investigation and four related arrests.
The secret tunnel, the 12th completed hidden passages discovered along the California border with Mexico since 2006, spanned from a restaurant in Mexicali, Mexico, to a newly constructed house in Calexico in California.
In the last five years, more than 75 others are found along the entire border of the two countries, mostly unfinished and situated in the California and Arizona states.
Drug traffickers were said to have bought the Calexico property in April for $240,000, completing a three-bedroom house by December. According to prosecutors, the first shipment via the passageway took place Feb. 28, leading to officials seizing 1,350 pounds of marijuana in West Covina.
Laura Duffy, attorney for California's Southern District, warned the operators and financiers behind the tunnel.
"We will seize your drugs and your tunnel before you even have a chance to use it," she says of the cross-border tunnel, which was intended to link Calexico, a city 120 miles east of San Diego and with about 40,000 residents, to the large industrial city of Mexicali.
Calexico is less attractive for drug traffickers due to its hard soil and mostly residential appeal, compared to San Diego that has clay-like, easy-to-dig soil and the industrial Otay Mesa area that is home to massive warehouses conducive to the drug trade.
Authorities detailed that the tunnel ran around 300 yards in Mexico from a restaurant and about 100 yards on American soil to the house in Calexico, where two men were arrested last Wednesday and charged crimes related to drug trafficking. In Arizona, two women —including the one who bought the Calexico property — were arrested Tuesday.
Mexico's Sinaloa cartel has long controlled drug trafficking along the Imperial Valley border in California. The cartel's leader, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was the first to form an engineering team to build intricate tunnels equipped with electric railways, hydraulic lifts, and even ventilation systems, according to a "60 Minutes" report of CBS.
Guzman's own prison escape back in July was executed through a mile-long tunnel opening up into his shower stall, which security cameras in his prison cells did not reach. He was recaptured this January.
Photo: Rod Ramsey | Flickr
