US Border Patrol agents on Tuesday discovered an illicit cross-border tunnel extending approximately 30 feet into the United States from east of the Morley Port of Entry in Nogales, Arizona.
Acting on information received from the Mexican government, Border Patrol agents, in cooperation with Mexican authorities, investigated the tunnel and determined it to be incomplete and approximately 80 feet long.
Tunnels like this one typically are generally used by transnational criminal organizations to smuggle narcotics into the United States, according to US Customs and Border Protection.
The first such illegal tunnel was found in 1990 in Douglas, Arizona, and since then US authorities have found more than 115 tunnels—110 of them in the Nogales area alone—and have managed to seize more than 17,500 pounds of drugs that were being smuggled through them.
Tucson sector officials have found or been tipped off to three tunnels since the beginning of the current fiscal year. US authorities said that agents put their lives in danger when they enter these tunnels, which are typically very primitive, to investigate them.
The announcement emerges on the heels of the discovery by police in the US of a long, drug-smuggling tunnel beginning in a restaurant in Mexicali, Mexico and ending about 365 meters away in a newly built home in Calexico, California, a small city about 193 kilometers east of San Diego.
US officials say drug traffickers bought land in Calexico for $240,000 in April 2015. They spent $86,000 to build the house, which was completed in December. The traffickers allegedly began smuggling illegal drugs through the tunnel February 28.
The discovery is notable because it marks the first time property was purchased with the express purpose of building a home to disguise a drug tunnel.
