Mexico City, Dec 4 (EFE) Thirteen Mexicans have been arrested for building a clandestine tunnel, which was equipped with a elevator, under the border with the US, authorities said.
“The tunnel is equipped with the most advanced technology and was presumably going to be used to smuggle drugs, arms and people into the United States,” Mexico’s Public Safety Secretariat said Thursday.
The tunnel, which came out of a warehouse in the border city of Tijuana and did not yet have a US entry point, was approximately 305 metres long and equipped with electricity, lighting, a ventilation system and an elevator.
Police arrested 11 adults and two minors in the operation to shut down the tunnel.
The construction workers, apparently bricklayers, are “allegedly linked to the criminal organisation run by the Arellano Felix (family)”, the secretariat said, adding that the suspects had apparently been working on the tunnel for about two years.
“Mexican authorities, acting on information provided by federal investigators from the multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force, conducted enforcement actions Wednesday targeting” the cross-border tunnel, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said Wednesday in announcing the discovery.
The passageway had a depth of between 27 and 30 metres.
“The discovery of this unfinished tunnel bears witness to the extraordinary cooperation between all agencies involved in the task force and the Government of Mexico,” DEA Special Agent in Charge Ralph W. Partridge said.
“It is extremely important to the San Diego area and the entire United States that this cooperative effort stopped the completion of this drug smuggling corridor before even an ounce of drugs could be transported through it,” Partridge said.
Last month, Mexican army troops and federal police found a 122-metre clandestine tunnel that was under construction and intended to link Tijuana, which is near San Diego, California, to the US.
Federal police officers searched the Auto Servicio Express shop in the 20 de Noviembre district, where they found piles of dirt apparently hauled in from another part of the border city.
Soldiers found the unfinished tunnel in a building that was under construction near the Tijuana International Airport.
The tunnel had a lighting and ventilation system, according to the Defense Secretariat, which said six people were arrested at the construction site.
In December 2008, a woman was rescued by US Border Patrol agents from a clandestine tunnel that collapsed as she tried to cross from Mexico into the US illegally.
