In mid-April, federal authorities in California discovered what they claimed was the longest drug smuggling tunnel ever constructed along the Golden state’s border with Mexico.
(FOX)- Spanning over 2,600 feet – roughly the length of nine football fields and complete with railing, ventilation and lighting – the tunnel ran from a flophouse in Tijuana to a fenced-in lot Otay Mesa. Along with the tunnel, the investigation also churned up 2,242 pounds of cocaine and 14,000 pounds of marijuana that authorities believe made its way to the U.S. through the tunnel.
While its size and the amount of drugs seized alongside it made the find headline news across the world, the tunnel is actually one of many found in recent years along California’s border with Mexico (13 since 2006 with three found on the same street). It has many experts wondering if drug traffickers are getting more prolific in their tunnel projects – during a time when the U.S. officials keep arguing over a border wall – or whether U.S. authorities are getting more sophisticated about how to find them.
“The tunnels have always been there. There’s nothing new about that,” Nelson Balido, the CEO of the Border Commerce and Security Council, told Fox News Latino. “But authorities have gotten better and technology has gotten better at detecting them.”
According to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) directorate, most of the existing technology used to uncover tunnels is based on equipment originally designed to detect land mines or identify natural gas and oil deposits.
Both the DHS and outside experts, however, say that this type of equipment is not ideally suited for tunnel detection as it is costly, varies in effectiveness depending on the soil and can be difficult to use.
“The technology is not what we want it to be,” Sylvia Longmire, an analyst on the drug trade and author of “Cartel and Border Insecurity,” told FNL. “It’s also not economically feasible to produce different sensors for the different types of soil along the border.”