Pubdate: Mon, 13 May 2002
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2002 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Julie Watson, AP

DRUG SMUGGLERS CREATING TUNNELS

More Secret Passages Between Mexico, U.S. As Borders Tighten After 
Sept. 11 Attacks

TECATE, Mexico - It was a typical bedroom with long curtains and a 
plush, floral rug -- except that the fireplace wasn't just for 
keeping things cozy.

When police removed the metal grill still holding charred logs, they 
found a secret tunnel to the United States.

Over the past decade, officials have discovered at least 16 tunnels 
along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, all thought to be used for 
smuggling drugs. Six have been found since December, and federal law 
enforcement officials on both sides of the border say they believe 
that five of them started operating after the Sept. 11 terrorist 
attacks. This suggests to them that heightened U.S. border security 
is driving more smugglers to the underground route.

``We firmly believe there is a direct relation to our fortification 
of the border,'' said Vincent Iglio, associate special agent in 
charge of the U.S. Customs Service in Tucson.

The passage behind the fireplace was discovered in February in an 
isolated ranch house 20 miles east of the Mexican border town of 
Tecate. It had rails on which smugglers would send cocaine on 
electric carts on a 300-yard journey into the back of a staircase of 
a house in Tierra del Sol, Calif.

While it is believed to have gone undetected for 10 years, the other 
recently discovered tunnels seem newer and more hastily dug.

One was still under construction when U.S. Border Patrol agents 
stumbled upon it last month. Another, found in March, was built to 
bypass the entrance of another tunnel that had already been 
discovered and sealed with concrete.

The sealed tunnel, found in December, ran 85 feet from a Nogales home 
in Arizona to a concrete drainage canal in Mexico, where smugglers 
covered the opening with a steel utility plate and resealed it with 
concrete each time they used it.

U.S. Customs authorities say they believe it had been operating for 
only three months, in which time smugglers moved some $20 million 
worth of cocaine and marijuana.

Another tunnel thought to have been put into operation since Sept. 11 
and found last month ended in a parking lot near the U.S. Customs 
office in Nogales.

Authorities on both sides of the border are looking for more, but it 
is a tough challenge.

``We can't go around doing seismic graphs, and we can't check without 
a search warrant,'' said Donald Thornhill Jr., a Drug Enforcement 
Administration official in San Diego.

The most elaborate tunnel was found 12 years ago. It ran 100 yards 
from a home in Agua Prieta, Mexico, to a warehouse in Douglas, Ariz. 
It had a rail car and the initial stages of a track, and was accessed 
by using hydraulic lifts that raised the entire floor of the home's 
game room.

Seven of the tunnels connected to storm drains linking the two cities 
named Nogales on either side of the Arizona border.

Years ago, street children lived in the drains and charged smugglers 
for the right to pass. Migrants also traipsed through the darkness 
until several drowned in a rush of floodwaters and the U.S. Border 
Patrol started monitoring the tunnels' openings on the U.S. side.

Thornhill said he did not believe that terrorists would use the 
tunnels. ``Drug traffickers have them pretty well locked up,'' he 
said. ``It's such a bonanza for them. I don't think terrorists would 
be welcome.''

The DEA suspects that the Arellano Felix gang, based in Tijuana, 65 
miles west of Tecate, moved as much as 10 tons of drugs into the 
United States -- part of it through the fireplace tunnel.
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