Two tunnels, one incomplete, reported at SD-Tijuana border

San Diego Union-Tribune

Dec. 13, 2016 1:45 PM PT

tijuana —

Mexican federal authorities are reporting that the Sinaloa Cartel is behind two clandestine tunnels — one of them completed — whose entrances were discovered west of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry.

A statement issued Monday by the Mexican federal Attorney General’s Office said that one of the tunnels led to San Diego and had been in operation. Video images provided by agency showed a passageway with rails, ventilation, lighting and supported by wood beams.

“Presumably, one of these tunnels was being used by a criminal organization operating in the state of Sinaloa for the smuggling of drugs into the United States,” according to the federal agency.

Authorities also reported the discovery of the entrance to an incomplete tunnel. The statement did not report arrests or the seizure of any drugs at either location.

According to the statement, the searches were conducted jointly Monday by the attorney general’s office with Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat and Federal Police. They took place five days after unconfirmed reports surfaced about the discovery of two tunnels in the area.

The statement cited the U.S. Consulate as the source of “reliable information that the cross-border tunnel was being reactivated.”

The tunnel entrances are within blocks of each other in a warehouse area south of the U.S. border fence. The discovery comes less than two months after authorities on both sides of the border confirmed the discovery of a tunnel with an entrance west of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry that led from from an ice-making business near the Tijuana airport.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations, which leads an inter-agency tunnel task force in San Diego, had no immediate comment on Tuesday.

U.S. authorities have reported the detection of more than 75 cross-border smuggling tunnels over the past five years, most of them in California and Arizona.

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble

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Sandra Dibble

Sandra Dibble covers the border and Mexico for The San Diego Union-Tribune. She was born in Egypt, raised in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, and has spent much of her career writing about international and multicultural topics. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She spent a year on an international journalism fellowship in which she traveled and studied in Mexico. She worked at The Miami Herald for nearly a decade, specializing in coverage of the Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian communities, and was part of a team awarded the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for uncovering the Reagan administration’s clandestine support of the Nicaraguan Contras. She spent three years at The National Geographic, where assignments included writing feature articles about Paraguay and Oaxaca. She has covered the Tijuana-San Diego border since 1994.

Two tunnels, one incomplete, reported at SD-Tijuana border

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