Air-conditioned drugs smuggling tunnel discovered on US-Mexico border

Mexican police have arrested eight men after discovering a sophisticated drug smuggling tunnel complete with air conditioning and a lift being dug close to the US border.

 

By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles
Last Updated: 12:49AM BST 04 Sep 2008

Previous

1 of 2 Images

Next

Officials discovered a clandestine passage after reports of suspicious activity at a house in Mexicali, across the border from Calexico Photo: AP

A US Border Patrol agent is seen from Mexico through the fence along the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico Photo: AP

The 150 yard-long passageway was found in northwest Mexico less than 65 yards from the US border and close to the California town of Calexico.

It was 1.4 yards wide and 5.4 yards below ground with an electric rail for transporting containers, ventilation, lights and air-conditioning, according to Juan Miguel Guillen, director of police in Mexico’s northern Baja California state.

 

Related Articles

• Top drug cartel leader arrested in Mexico, officials say

• US buys Mexico helicopters to fight drug violence

• Barack Obama sends agents to tackle Mexican drugs violence

• Mexican drug wars now worse than Iraq

• US Sentate pledges £380m to Mexico drug war

Officials discovered the clandestine passage after reports of suspicious activity, including the presence of armed men, at a house in Mexicali, across the border from Calexico. They moved in and arrested eight suspects, found below ground digging the tunnel.

“The detainees confessed that they were looking after the building where a drug tunnel was being built,” Mr Guillen told Agence France Presse.

Agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration were conducting excavations to discover the planned exit point for the tunnel on US soil.

The tunnel’s lift was operated by a hydraulic pulley. Police also found a gun, digging tools and a truck used to cart away the excavated earth at the scene.

The 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico is the major gateway for much of the cocaine and marijuana that enters the States. The attempted use of tunnels as a means to smuggle in drugs – and also illegal immigrants – is not uncommon. At least 75 have been discovered along America’s border with Mexico since the 1990s, according to Lauren Mack, of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 63 of those since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In 2006, the largest and deepest tunnel ever found was discovered running between the Mexican city of Tijuana and San Diego, in California. Some 787 yards long, it passed under a densely patrolled stretch of the border and ran between two warehouses.

All of the tunnels constructed in the southern US have been found in border areas in California and Arizona, Ms Mack added.

Mexico’s multi-million-dollar drugs trade is controlled by cartels engaged in violent turf wars, particularly in trafficking hotspots near the border. Authorities did not say for whom the arrested men, who are being held in Mexicali, were believed to be working.

Drug-related violence has surged across Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on drug-related brutality nearly two years ago. At least 2,700 people have died so far this year.

Illegals shock, suffocate, slit throats in U.S

Posted: August 27, 2008
11:48 pm Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

INVASION USA
Alien murderers-for-hire send 4 shipped back to Mexico in body bags

 

A showdown over drug money between suspected Mexican illegal aliens in Alabama ended with four men in prison and four shipped back to Mexico in body bags.

Three suspected illegal aliens from Mexico and another man have been arrested and charged with capital murder for electrocuting, stabbing, suffocating and beating five men to death in a murder-for-hire.

The four suspects were paid between $400,000 and $450,000 to torture the victims with electric shock and slit their throats in an Alabama apartment, police said Tuesday. The murders have been tied to a drug cartel that transports cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana, the Birmingham News reported.

Shelby County Sheriff Chris Curry said he believed the murders could have been revenge slayings after the victims embezzled money from a drug cartel.

“It revolves around money, and that money revolves around drugs,” he said.

Curry said there might have been other targets on the hit list who escaped before police arrived.

 

Authorities found the bodies of Angel Horacio Vega-Gonzalez, 23, and his brother Gustavo Vega-Gonzalez, also known as Armando Lopez, 24; Ezequiel Rebollar-Terevan, 23; Jaime Echeverria, 30; and a fifth unknown victim Wednesday.

The coroner’s office is waiting for dental records before the fifth victim can be identified. The other four victims’ bodies have been shipped back to their families in Mexico.

Suspects Alejandros Castaneda, 31, and Juan Francisco Castaneda, 25, brothers; Rodriguez Jaime Duenas, 22; and Christopher Scott Jones, 40 are being held in the Shelby County Jail without bond.

A clean crime scene

District Attorney Robby Owens said the apartment crime scene was “well-manicured” by suspects and didn’t appear to be a location where brutal slayings had taken place.

“This was the cleanest crime scene I’ve ever walked on,” he said.

Owens said the murderers used electrical wall sockets to shock the victims three days before the bodies were discovered. Finding the men was not an easy task, he said. They had multiple addresses and used several names. But citizens helped by calling police and providing tips about their whereabouts.

“We had five people, we didn’t know who they were, why they were there,” Curry said. “It took a significant amount of time to get past that hurdle.”

The suspects participated in a video teleconference hearing before Shelby County Circuit Judge J. Michael Joiner Tuesday. Three of the men could not speak English and required an interpreter to help them communicate, turning a 15-minute hearing into a two-hour ordeal, the Birmingham News reported.

Duenas and Alejandros Castaneda told the judge they were innocent.

“I don’t know why two charges when I didn’t do anything,” Duenas said.

Alejandros Castaneda added: “I was out of town when this happened, so how can I be charged?”

Crime creeping across U.S. border

The drug-related murders came on the heels of recent reports of tightened U.S. security along the Southern border as cartels send murderers-for-hire into the U.S. Last week, Texas and New Mexico authorities reported a hit list identifying 15 to 20 targets in the two states alone.

Illegal immigrant violence has claimed the lives of many Americans. As WND reported earlier, MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, a highly organized and well-funded Central American gang, has infiltrated at least 33 states across the U.S., according to law-enforcement authorities. The gang is well-known in Los Angeles, Houston, New York and Washington, D.C., for excessive brutality. Any person suspected of cooperating with authorities is hunted down, tortured and killed. Initiation rites include kickings, beatings and gang rapes.

Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included rapes, murders and child molestation crimes committed by illegal aliens. Approximately 41 percent of the crimes were sexual homicides and serial murders.

Though no federal statistics are kept on murders or any other crimes committed by illegal aliens, a number of groups have produced estimates based on data collected from prisons, news reports and independent research.

Twelve Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens, according to 2006 statistics released by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. If those numbers are correct, it translates to 4,380 Americans murdered annually by illegal aliens – more than the U.S. death toll of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. That’s more than 30,000 Americans killed by illegal aliens since Sept. 11, 2001.