SAN DIEGO – Federal authorities said Friday they had discovered and sealed a long, crudely built tunnel for drug trafficking that connected two small homes in a hillside neighborhood on the Arizona-Mexico border.
The tunnel appeared ready to transport drugs when U.S. and Mexican agents Thursday conducted simultaneous raids on the homes in Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico, authorities said.
Five men were arrested at the house in Mexico. The home in Arizona, which appeared to be vacant, contained a jack hammer, a pick and kneepads, according to Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which conducted a joint investigation with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Though the houses were only 100 yards apart, the tunnel twisted and turned for more than 200 yards. While more sophisticated drug tunnels discovered in recent years feature ventilation and rail and cart systems, the Nogales passage was narrow and poorly constructed, authorities said.
At 3 feet by 3 feet, the tunnel was barely wide enough for a person to crawl through. Two Mexican police officers crawled 20 minutes to traverse the passage and emerged winded, said David Petersmarck, an ICE supervisory special agent in Arizona.
“They weren’t doing well. They were pale,” Petersmarck said. “It was hard to get through.”
Federal agents, acting on a tip, had kept the Arizona home under surveillance since April. They don’t believe the tunnel was ever operational.
In recent years, more than 50 tunnels have been found along the U.S.-Mexico border as drug traffickers go underground to avoid beefed-up enforcement efforts above ground.
Tunnels are regularly discovered in Nogales, 70 miles south of Tucson, where traffickers often branch off a large water drainage network to tunnel into houses or vacant lots.
U.S. authorities sealed the tunnel entrance and said they plan to fill the entire passage. In the past, drug traffickers have reused unfilled tunnels in Nogales and San Diego to build new passages.
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