U.S. Drug Tunnels: A Rising Terror Threat

U.S. Drug Tunnels: A Rising Terror Threat

צילום אילוסטרציה (123rf)

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Illustration photo (123rf)
Illustration photo (123rf)

Drugs are flowing into the U.S. through tunnels on the Mexican border. Experts say that these may be used for terror acts and they call for a bigger effort to discover them early as possible.

Nogales has been at the epicenter of a cross-border drug tunnels for years. U.S. authorities have found 100 drug tunnels in that city since 1990, more than any other location along the 2,000-mile United States-Mexico border.

But the tunnel found recently tops them all. At 481 feet it is the longest ever discovered in Nogales, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

According to the Arizona Republic the tunnel extended from a house in Nogales, Sonora, to a house in Nogales, Ariz., and was being used to smuggle marijuana and other drugs into the U.S., ICE officials said.

Federal authorities found a half pound of heroin and 46 pounds of marijuana inside.

They seized another 590 pounds of marijuana after stopping a vehicle federal agents saw driving away from the house in Nogales, Ariz. The house was under surveillance by a multiagency task force created in 2012 to find and dismantle drug tunnels.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

Last fiscal year, six of the seven tunnels found along the U.S.-Mexico border were found in Nogales. In 2012, seven of the 16 tunnels found on the border were in Nogales, and 12 of the 18 the year before that, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Nogales is popular for drug tunnels because smugglers can tap a vast underground drainage system that connects the border cities. Once inside the drainage system, smugglers bore spider tunnels into the U.S., he said. The two cities also have large neighborhoods close to each other, making it easy for smugglers to dig tunnels from a house on the Mexican side to a house on the U.S. side, he said.

The tunnel found last week stretched 70 feet from a house in Nogales, Sonora, to the U.S. border and then another 411 feet to a house in Nogales, Ariz., ICE officials said. The passageway was roughly 2 feet wide and 3 feet high, and had wood shoring, electric lighting and ventilation fans, ICE officials said.

The tunnel task force includes officers from ICE, the Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Nogales police, and Mexican authorities.