Crack US unit duels with Mexico drug tunnelers

Since 05-12-06

By Tim Gaynor

May 11, 2006

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-05-11T130523Z_01_N10219397_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEXICO-USA-TUNNELS.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

OTAY MESA, California (Reuters) - Dug by hand with the help of rogue mining engineers to link warehouses on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border, it was the longest, deepest and boldest drug smuggling tunnel found to date.

But before the Mexican gang had even punched through a concrete floor to emerge opposite a washroom in a distribution depot in Otay Mesa, California, a crack law enforcement team with expertise honed in the hunt for Osama bin Laden was on their trail.

Little known outside police circles, the Tunnel Task Force came to light with the January 24 discovery of the passageway that was used to haul tons of marijuana almost half-a-mile (800 meters) from Mexico.

Based in San Diego, the team pools the resources of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection, and it draws support from a special U.S. military unit.

U.S. authorities have identified tunnels as an emerging threat to homeland security in the wake of the September 11 attacks.. Since then at least 40 have been uncovered linking cities in Arizona and California with Mexico, and one ran under the border from Canada to Washington state.

Most were shallow and easy-to-detect "gopher holes" used by undocumented immigrants to scrabble north. But the most sophisticated were scooped out by cash-rich Mexican cartels burrowing ever deeper and further inside U.S. territory in a bid to reap billions of dollars in drug profits. The one discovered in January was fitted with lights and a ventilation system.

"What they now have to take into their business equation is that every single resource from the federal government is particularly geared to finding things like this, and we're getting better and better at what we do," said Frank Marwood, the special agent in charge of ICE in San Diego.