Crack unit duels with Mexico drug tunnelers

By Tim Gaynor

OTAY MESA, California (Reuters) – Dug by hand with the help
of rogue mining engineers to link warehouses on either side of
the U.S.-Mexico border, it was the longest, deepest and boldest
drug smuggling tunnel found to date.

But before the Mexican gang had even punched through a
concrete floor to emerge opposite a washroom in a distribution
depot in Otay Mesa, California, a crack law enforcement team
with expertise honed in the hunt for Osama bin Laden was on
their trail.

Little known outside police circles, the Tunnel Task Force
came to light with the January 24 discovery of the passageway
that was used to haul tons of marijuana almost half-a-mile (800
meters) from Mexico.

Based in San Diego, the team pools the resources of the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), the Border Patrol and Customs and Border
Protection, and it draws support from a special U.S. military
unit.

U.S. authorities have identified tunnels as an emerging
threat to homeland security in the wake of the September 11
attacks.. Since then at least 40 have been uncovered linking
cities in Arizona and California with Mexico, and one ran under
the border from Canada to Washington state.

Most were shallow and easy-to-detect “gopher holes” used by
undocumented immigrants to scrabble north. But the most
sophisticated were scooped out by cash-rich Mexican cartels
burrowing ever deeper and further inside U.S. territory in a
bid to reap billions of dollars in drug profits. The one
discovered in January was fitted with lights and a ventilation
system.

“What they now have to take into their business equation is
that every single resource from the federal government is
particularly geared to finding things like this, and we’re
getting better and better at what we do,” said Frank Marwood,
the special agent in charge of ICE in San Diego.

THE HUNT FOR BIN LADEN

The Tunnel Task Force was set up two years ago and meets
weekly in a federal building close to the border. The search
for tunnels is led by intelligence gathered by agents working
with contacts on both sides of the border.

First indications that a big tunnel was under construction
came as long ago as early 2005. Then in January, the team
narrowed the search to an area east of Tijuana International
Airport, and called in support from an El Paso, Texas-based
military unit.

Originally called Joint Task Force Six, the
combined-services unit was founded in 1989 to provide technical
and intelligence support to federal police snaring drug
traffickers on the Mexico border. It was renamed Joint Task
Force North in 2004 and given an additional homeland security
role.

Its members are specialists in hunting for tunnels. Some
learned their skills in the U.S. war in Afghanistan, where the
search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden initially focused on
the Tora Bora caves and tunnel complexes near the Pakistan
border.

Given a stretch of ground, in this instance a strip of
churned up clay between twin fences marking the Mexico border,
the engineers use geo-science technologies including ground
radar, magnetometers and seismic detectors to search for
“discreet voids” left by man-made tunnels.

“It’s getting to a point where we are planning to build our
own tunnels to different depths and specifications to perfect
the technologies that we are using to hunt for them,” JTFN
engineer Lt. Col. Steve Baker told Reuters.

While the breakthrough in the Otay Mesa hunt came from
human intelligence, Baker predicts progress in the technologies
will enable the team to “put the (traffickers) out of business
in five years.”

PROFESSIONAL MINERS

But the Tunnel Task Force experts have their work cut out
for them. Experts say they are pitting their wits against
professional mining engineers brought in to dig industry
standard shafts and galleries.

Consultants brought in from the Kentucky coal fields to
survey the Otay Mesa tunnel found that it had been chipped out
by hand using pickaxes and electrical jackhammers to a depth
equivalent to a nine-story building.

Neatly finished with a concrete floor, it made a straight
run to its mark, and had been carefully built with a sloping
gradient to allow ground water to sink to the lowest point on
the Mexican side of the border, from where it was easily pumped
out.

“The experts indicate that (it) could not have been
completed without the help of someone with an excellent
knowledge of mining, either building it or advising those who
worked on it.” Marwood said.

The Task Force believes that the clandestine route was open
for about two months before it was discovered, during which
time traffickers used wheelbarrows to haul marijuana and
probably cocaine, heroin and amphetamines north.

So far only one man has been arrested and charged in the
investigation into the tunnel, which authorities believe was
built by either the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug gang or a
band linked to Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “El Chapo”
Guzman.

The discovery cost the gang millions of dollars. But agents
say the cartels are unlikely to stop digging, and may even
extend their high-stakes duel with the Tunnel Task Force to
other, untried areas of the border in search of profits.

“Could they build a tunnel under the Rio Grande?” Marwood
mused. “It really is just an engineering question. If the money
is right for them, they can do whatever is possible.”