Thread: CA: U.S., Mexican authorities looking for border tunnel

U.S., Mexican authorities looking for border tunnel


UNION-TRIBUNE
2:00 a.m. June 30, 2009
U.S. and Mexican authorities were searching yesterday for a tunnel used to transport drugs or immigrants to the United States beneath the border fence at Smugglers Gulch.
About 6 p.m., Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were gathered around a manhole on the U.S. side of the border, just feet from a second manhole in Tijuana by the side of Avenida Internacional, a busy highway leading from downtown Tijuana to the suburb of Playas de Tijuana.
Smugglers have used the public drainage system to funnel people or drugs from Tijuana to San Diego.

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U.S. agents find shored-up 53-foot tunnel near border


UNION-TRIBUNE
8:07 p.m. July 2, 2009

U.S. law enforcement agents investigating an incomplete cross-border tunnel west of the San Ysidro border crossing report that they have found a 53-foot passageway shored up with plywood and equipped with battery-powered lights.
The unearthed stretch was reached Thursday by officers from the Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Lauren Mack, an ICE spokeswoman in San Diego. The tunnel is east of Smugglers Gulch.
The tunnel's builders entered through a manhole near the border fence in Mexico and crawled through 700 feet of sewer drain, on both sides of the border, Mack said.
The U.S. agents found an exit to the tunnel covered with an old sofa cushion on the compound of the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Law enforcement officials believe the tunnel was being built to smuggle humans and drugs.

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