Thread: Drug tunnel found next to Nogales parking meter

Drug tunnel found next to Nogales parking meter

Posted: 4:28 PM
Last Updated: 2 minutes ago
By: Associated Press

NOGALES, AZ - A drug tunnel has been found ending at a metered parking space in the southeastern Arizona city of Nogales.

The 13-foot-long tunnel begins directly against the border fence on the Mexican side and leads to an opening 10 inches in diameter in downtown Nogales.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Vincent Picard said Tuesday that vehicles with holes cut in the bottom were able to park over the hole in the street. He says people inside the tunnel pushed marijuana through the holes to people inside vehicles.

Agents uncovered the tunnel Monday after seeing a cylindrical bundle fall out of the van.

After they began chasing the van, the driver escaped on foot. The passenger was arrested and will face charges.

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_ce ... king-meter

Low-riding van leads feds to drug tunnel

By the Nogales International
Published Tuesday, December 14, 2010 4:03 PM CST

While conducting surveillance in Nogales on Monday, federal law enforcement agents noticed a white Ford panel van riding unusually low to the ground.

Feeling suspicious, the agents tracked the van to a local health clinic. Later, as the van pulled out of the clinic’s parking lot, the agents saw a cylindrical bundle fall out of the vehicle.

The agents, from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations division, pulled over the van. The driver fled but the agents were able to detain a passenger. Inside, they found 2,194 pounds of marijuana in familiar-looking form, ICE said in a news release Tuesday.

The van had a crude trap door cut in its floor.

The cylindrical bundles, ICE said, looked a lot like those seized during previous operations in which smugglers had ferried the drugs across the border from Mexico through tunnels. The van also had a trap door cut in its floor, suggesting the drugs had come from a subterranean entry point.

“Whenever we identify bundles that appear to have come through a tunnel, it’s all hands on deck until we can identify the source,â€