The Mexico Knew About The Drug Tunnels For Years.

[Bullfighter]

How else could those drug cartels get away with everything they do:

San Diego drug tunnel had railcar, tons of pot ​

By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press

​

http://oascentral.hosted.ap.org/Rea...x.com/ad/ck/13966-88303-1856-3?mpt=1462633818

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Investigators suspect a major drug cartel was the driving force behind two long, sophisticated tunnels connecting Mexico with the U.S. that were discovered this month along with more than 40 tons of marijuana.

Authorities said an underground passage located Thursday was similar to one found earlier - both running around 2,000 feet from Mexico to San Diego and equipped with lighting, ventilation, and a rail system for drugs to be carried on a small cart.

The tunnels are believed to be the work of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, headed by that country's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, said Mike Unzueta, head of investigations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego.

"We think ultimately they are controlled by the same overall cartel but that the tunnels were being managed and run independently by different cells operating within the same organization," Unzueta said Friday.

The tunnel found Thursday is more than seven football fields in length and extends from the kitchen of a home in Tijuana, Mexico, to two warehouses in San Diego's Otay Mesa industrial district.

Three men were arrested in the United States, and the Mexican military raided a ranch in Mexico and made five arrests in connection with the tunnel, authorities said.

U.S. authorities have discovered more than 125 clandestine tunnels along the Mexican border since the early 1990s, though many were crude and incomplete.

The passage found Thursday is one of the most sophisticated to date, with an entry shaft in Mexico lined with cinderblocks and the rail system, Unzueta said.

U.S. authorities do not know how long the latest tunnel was operating. Unzueta said investigators began to look into it in June on a tip that emerged from a large bust of marijuana, cocaine and methampethamine by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

U.S. authorities followed a trailer from one of the warehouses to a Border Patrol checkpoint in Temecula, where they seized 27,600 pounds of marijuana. The driver, whose name was not released, was arrested, along with two others who went to a residence in suburban El Cajon that had $13,500 cash inside.

"That (trailer) was literally filled top to bottom, front to back," Unzueta said. "There wasn't any room for anything else in that tractor-trailer but air."

Three tons of marijuana were found in a "subterranean room" and elsewhere in the tunnel on the U.S. side, authorities said. Mexican officials seized four tons of pot at a ranch in northern Mexico, bringing the total haul to more than 20 tons.

The discovery of the cross-border tunnel earlier this month marked one of the largest marijuana seizures in the United States, with agents confiscating 20 tons of marijuana they said was smuggled through the underground passage. That tunnel ran the length of six football fields under the border and warehouses in Mexico and San Diego. One of the warehouses involved in the tunnel discovered Thursday is only a half-block away.

In Thursday's discovery, the tunnel's cinderblock-lined entry in Mexico dropped 80 to 90 feet to a wood-lined floor, Unzueta said. From the U.S. side, there was a stairway leading to a room about 50 feet underground that was full of marijuana.

"It's a lot like how the ancient Egyptians buried the kings and queens," Unzueta said.

Several sophisticated tunnels have ended in San Diego warehouses. ICE began meeting with landowners last month to warn them about leasing space to tunnel builders.

"These owners of warehouses, they need to know their customers, they need to know who's in there leasing these things," Unzueta said.

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The Mexican government knows about what these drug cartels do. They endorse it to poison the American people and destroy the American way of life. Only a military attack by the United States into Mexico will destroy the drug cartels.

 

[Avatar4321]

Stop buying illegal drugs and we dont have to worry about a drug tunnel

 

[asaratis]

Mexico has one of the most corrupt governments known to man. What do you expect?

 

[Bullfighter]

Stop buying illegal drugs and we dont have to worry about a drug tunnel

Return ALL Mexicans to Mexico as defective!

 

[BlindBoo]

Good deal now maybe they can import some more Kind Buds from Canada!

(Better yet go to Amsterdam, bring back some fine seeds and grow your own and you can help dry up the Mexican Cartels money supply.)

Fuck the Cartels and fuck the war on Citizens who use non-approved recreational substances for fun.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Both sides have known about the tunnels for more than 20 years.

Yes, the Mexica govt is corrupt. Yes, the American people have an insatiable drug habit.

Yes, it is a shame.

 

[Bullfighter]

Both sides have known about the tunnels for more than 20 years.

Yes, the Mexica govt is corrupt. Yes, the American people have an insatiable drug habit.

Yes, it is a shame.

Then let us support the Dream Act so the country will have the biggest idiots in charge of the US nuclear arsenal.

 

[JBeukema]

the mexico?

as opposed to... new mexico?

 

[JakeStarkey]

J. B., don't you know the true chucos refer to it as "the Mexico?"

 

[waltky]

Granny thinks dem Hispexicans is tryin' to tunnel up through her bedroom floor...

Mexico-U.S. Border Tunnels a Security Risk
January 16, 2017 - Mexican drug cartels have burrowed dozens of tunnels in the past decade, outfitted them with rail and cart systems to whisk drugs under the U.S. border and, after being discovered by authorities, abandoned them. But some of the illicit passageways live on.

At least six previously discovered border tunnels have been reactivated by Mexican trafficking groups in recent years, exposing a recurring large-scale smuggling threat, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials. The breaches of border defenses, most recently in December, occur because Mexican authorities, unlike those on the American side, do not fill the tunnels with concrete once they have been discovered. Mexican authorities say they lack the funds. Instead, only the tunnel openings are sealed. That allows traffickers to simply dig a new entry point to access the largely intact subterranean passageways leading to the U.S. border.

The security lapse is a boon for traffickers, experts say, saving them time and money and reducing their risk of being caught as they haul away dirt. “The biggest threat is that it’s a huge open invitation for drug traffickers, and it’s definitely going to be taken advantage of,” said Michael Unzueta, a former special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. On the U.S. side, drug tunnels have been filled since 2007, after The Los Angeles Times reported that they were being left unfilled because of budget constraints at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Prompted by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who called the tunnels a “national security risk,” the agency has filled every large tunnel up to the border ever since, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.

An armed U.S. Border Patrol agent walks inside a huge underground rainwater drainage tunnel in Nogales, Ariz.​

U.S. authorities at the time expected traffickers to reactivate the tunnels, and some recommended that the U.S. consider paying Mexico’s costs of filling the tunnels on its side. But funding was never found. Since 2007, it has cost Customs and Border Protection $8.7 million to fill drug tunnels, according to a 2016 report by the Department of Homeland Security. Now an estimated 20 large tunnels, built before and after 2007, remain largely intact on the Mexican side, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. The tunnel issue could take on more urgency under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has made border security a central feature of his campaign. Border patrol agents who are part of Trump’s transition team said they plan to bring it up with the new administration. “We don’t want to leave infrastructure in place in the form of half-completed tunnels for (cartels) to use,” said Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union of agents whose leaders have advised Trump on border security issues. “The cartels are by no means stupid. They’re taking the idea to work smarter, not harder, when it comes to these tunnels.”

When border fencing went up, traffickers moved underground. Since 2006 there have been 148 tunnels built, according to the DHS, most of them in Arizona and California. The biggest underground threats now come from what border officials refer to as “super tunnels,” which cost millions of dollars to dig and feature sophisticated touches such as lighting and ventilation systems that extend for hundreds of yards down wood-beamed passageways. Most have been built in San Diego’s Otay Mesa region, 20 miles south of downtown. The truck-clogged landscape of nondescript warehouses has long served as ideal cover for underground incursions emanating from a light industrial area directly across the border in Tijuana. It was here in November 2010 that U.S. and Mexican authorities made one of the biggest drug busts ever, seizing 30 tons of marijuana from warehouses linked by a 600-yard passageway.

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