US BORDER POLICE have uncovered a massive underground drug-smuggling tunnel linking southern California with Mexico.
Reuters reports that the tunnel – the size of six football fields – runs between warehouses in Otay Mesa in California, and Tijuana in Mexico, the country’s principal gateway for drugs.
The tunnel and operation is so sophisticated that it is equipped with a rail system, pulleys, lighting and ventilation.
Border agents also recovered more than 25 tonnes of marijuana in seizures, and arrested a US citizen and his Mexican wife in connection with the discovery.
John Morton, director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) said:
This wasn’t a mom-and-pop operation, or in this case a husband and wife operation. This is clearly organised crime at work. This was the cartels.
Mexico is in the midst of a bloody drug war that has claimed the lives of some 30,000 people since 2006, when it launched a crackdown on the powerful drug gangs battling for control of the market.
Mexican cartels are said to have created scores of tunnels under the US-Mexico border in recent years, with all of them linking to cities on either side of Mexico’s border with California and Arizona.
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