Officials Dig Into a Border Mystery

A curious little mystery has cropped up at the U.S.-Mexican border.

Or more precisely, under it.

This subterranean puzzler revolves around assertions that immigrant smugglers have been using a closed “narco-tunnel” that was dug about five years ago by drug traffickers seeking to sneak contraband to the U.S. side.

U.S. Border Patrol agents say they have evidence that smugglers have reopened the quarter-mile tunnel, which pops to the surface on the U.S. side near the busy Otay Mesa truck crossing. But Mexican authorities are skeptical. They contend that the tunnel’s mouth on the Mexican side--beneath a government warehouse near Tijuana’s airport--is under constant watch and is swamped in mud and water.

“There’s no oxygen. There’s no light. It’s full of mud and rocks,” said a Mexican official who accompanied reporters on a tour Tuesday of the dank opening, which drops about six stories from the warehouse to a watery floor. “There’s no possibility.”

Border Patrol spokesman Robert Smith said: “It’s a mystery.”

A mystery that sleuths on both sides of the border are trying to get to the bottom of.

The chief federal prosecutor in Baja told reporters his investigation was just underway. But he made no effort to hide his disbelief that the tunnel’s opening in Mexico could have been used to smuggle immigrants.

Authorities on the U.S. side, meanwhile, say they want to make sure the tunnel is safe before investigators go spelunking for clues. “We’re trying not to rush this. It’s a multinational investigation and we’re trying to do it right,” Smith said.

The tunnel, which became legendary after it was discovered in 1993 by Mexican federal police hunting the killers of the Roman Catholic cardinal of Guadalajara, burrowed its way back into public view this week after the arrest of a group of 33 illegal immigrants in San Diego.

The Border Patrol announced that the group, captured about a quarter-mile from the tunnel’s north end, apparently had been smuggled through it. The agency cited several pieces of evidence. For one, the migrants “just seemed to materialize” before they were seen by an agent using an infrared scope, officials said. Also, the border crossers were wet and covered with mud.

“It hasn’t rained in that area in quite a while, so we were wondering where they had gotten wet and muddy,” Smith said. Footprints led back to the U.S. end of the tunnel, where agents discovered that steel bars used to cap the 4-foot opening had been sawed off.

Moreover, some of the detained immigrants said they were shuttled through the tunnel, Smith said.

It was the second time in the past few weeks that a group of migrants has been caught, wet and muddy, in that area without having been detected earlier.

Smith said it was unknown who cut the steel lid, or whether it was done from inside or out. The tunnel’s U.S. end is a vertical shaft drilled by investigators after the passage was discovered. It lies in an open field near the Otay Mesa truck crossing.

On Tuesday, a Border Patrol agent sat parked next to the opening, which was topped by a heavy steel plate and three large stones. Under the lid, a series of mud-caked aluminum ladders, anchored by rope, descended into the darkness. A plastic water bottle was all that could be seen at the bottom, about 60 feet down. From this vantage point, the tunnel thesis appeared plausible.

But at the Tijuana end, the tunnel’s conditions made it hard to envision groups of people clambering into the void. Guards said the warehouse facility, used to store contraband confiscated by federal authorities, is under 24-hour watch. The descent in the darkness merely to get to the tunnel’s mouth is tricky and dangerous. From there, one would descend a rusty ladder to reach the bottom.

Which has given rise to yet another theory: Maybe both sides are right. Maybe the migrants emerged on the U.S. side without using the original Tijuana entrance.

“It’s a possibility they may have come in through another tunnel,” the Border Patrol’s Smith said. “We never said that, yes, they came through that old entrance.”

Finding that new tunnel would make a fine sequel. Another one.