| | |  Americas & Beyond 
Mexico, US Drug Tunnel Discovered
 RTE News
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November 04, 2010
| | Investigators said the tunnel is about waist high. | |
US border police have found a sophisticated drug smugglers' tunnel the length of six football fields linking southern California with Mexico.
The US Customs and Border Protection agency said the tunnel ran between warehouses in Otay Mesa, California, and Tijuana, Mexico.
It measures 550 meters and is equipped with a rail system, lighting and ventilation.
Investigators said the tunnel is about waist high and was fitted with rails and a pulley system that they suspect was used to ferry drugs under the border in a cart. It had been in operation for less than a month.
Agents recovered more than 25 tonnes of marijuana in seizures related to the investigation in both California and Mexico and arrested a US citizen and his Mexican wife.
The couple were stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint in southern California, driving a vehicle loaded with ten tonnes of pot.
The truck had earlier left the warehouse, which agents had under surveillance.
'This is clearly organised crime at work. This was the cartels,' said John Morton, director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Mexico is in the grip of a raging drug war that has killed more than 30,000 people south of the border since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on powerful drug gangs.
Mexican cartels have bored scores of tunnels under the US-Mexico border in recent years to beat ramped-up security at ports of entry and the rugged spaces in between.
Nearly all of them linked cities on either side of Mexico's border with California and Arizona.
Tijuana is the principal gateway for drugs entering California from Mexico.
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