U.S. authorities announced on Wednesday the discovery of the longest smuggling tunnel ever found in the Mexico-U.S. border that connects Tijuana and San Diego.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) informed that the tunnel begins in an industrial area in Mexico and is 1.3 km long .
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It includes a large rails system , forced ventilation , high tension electric cables and panels , an elevator at the entrance of the tunnel, and a complex sewage system , said CBP.
“Although underground tunnels are not a new thing throughout the border of California and Mexico, the sophistication and length of this particular one show the hard work of transnational criminal organizations to ease cross-border smuggling,” said Cardell T. Morant , a special interim agent in charge of the National Security investigations in San Diego.
After the discovery in August , Mexican authorities identified the entrance of the tunnel and some members of the San Diego Tunnels Operation Force began to map it from Mexico, added the CBP.
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The longest tunnel registered between the U.S. and Mexico was discovered in San Diego in 2014 and was 904 meters long.
The recently discovered tunnel is approximately 1.68 meters high and 0.61 meters wide and an average depth of 21.3 meters under the surface , according to the authorities. Likewise, they said the tunnel was found in 2019 after which they began the mapping of the area to know the extension of the construction.
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Agents found several hundreds of sand sacks that were blocking the alleged exit of the tunnel in a storage unit in the Otay Mesa district in the U.S.
The discovery led to no arrests or seizures.
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