MEXICO CITY, Mexico (Reuters) - When designer Felipe de Jesus Corona built Mexico's many absolute drug duke a 200-foot-long hovel underneath a U.S.-Mexican limit with a hydraulic lift opening non-stop by a feign H2O tap, a kingpin was impressed.
The designer "made me one f---ing cold tunnel" Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman said, according to justice testimony that helped judgment Corona to 18 years in jail in 2006.
Built next a pool list in his lawyer's home, a hovel was among a initial of an increasingly worldly drug ride complement used by Guzman's Sinaloa cartel. U.S. etiquette agents seized some-more than 2,000 pounds of heroin that had allegedly been smuggled along a subterraneous route.
In a past 5 years, a crackdown on drug smugglers in Mexico and tighter U.S. limit confidence above belligerent has led to a thespian boost in a use, and a sophistication, of tunnels underneath a border.
There have been some-more than 100 tunnels detected during President Felipe Calderon's 5 years in office, double a series found over a prior 15 years.
Officials think many recently found tunnels go to a Sinaloa cartel, that has been perfecting a technique for dual decades regulating specialized record and a cadre of lerned builders.
Agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, are perplexing to close a tunnels down, operative with a few companies that have a record and apparatus to puncture low and prolonged plane shafts to forestall tunnel construction.
Two drug passageways were detected along a California limit in a past month, including one about 1,600 feet prolonged in San Diego.
Authorities seized over 32 tonnes of marijuana, value $65 million, there after busting drivers hauling drugs from a tunnel's finish during a mistake furnish room to an industrial suburb outward Los Angeles.
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Graphic on tunnels: http://link.reuters.com/maw45s
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"It's clear that those who assembled these tunnels are specialists, not usually for a distance though also since it requires investigate of a dirt to forestall it from caving in," pronounced General Gilberto Landeros, a Mexican army commander, during a new find of a Tijuana tunnel. "The machine they use for construction is unequivocally sophisticated."
That tunnel, full with a hydraulically tranquil steel door, conveyor and electric rail tracks, was built by a Sinaloa cartel, that controls a California-Mexico limit area where a bulk of subterranean passages are, he said.
To den low and prolonged - one hovel stretched 2.5 miles - smugglers occupy absolute machinery, some of that can gimlet a tiny hole low in a dirt and emanate a walled missile though carrying to send anyone next ground.
"It's super fast, it's unequivocally indeed scary," pronounced Tim Durst, partner special representative in assign of ICE's San Diego office. "You can have a hovel finished in a integrate of weeks."
PROFESSIONALS RECRUITED
The drilling apparatus costs between $50,000 and $75,000, and officials contend they have no approach to stop cartels from receiving a high-powered gear.
"If it's a Sinaloa cartel, they have total resources," Durst said. A good built hovel could be used to pierce 25 tonnes of drugs in one or dual days, he said.
Officials trust cartels are branch to smaller plane drills that puncture a length of a hovel quick and can simply be dark in warehouses, a adored plcae among smugglers perplexing to mix into industrial areas along a border.
Only a handful of companies furnish a specialized drills routinely used for laying subterranean pipelines and other infrastructure projects. ICE officials are pulling to find a purchasers, though vendors contend it is formidable to be certain of buyers' identities.
"If these guys have business cards that contend (Mexico's state oil company) Pemex and they wish to do a tube here, how am we to know accurately what they are going to do?" pronounced Gregg Shelton, who sells large-scale drilling apparatus for American Auger, an Ohio-based manufacturer.
Hauling tons of drugs is no easy task. Even with industrial-sized equipment, construction can take weeks and requires learned workers.
"The form is somebody who has engineering or mining experience," pronounced Joe Garcia, emissary special representative in assign for homeland confidence investigations in ICE's San Diego office. "It has to be somebody who is going to use attempted and loyal contemplating techniques with a compass and line of sight."
Authorities are still acid for a designer of an Arizona hovel detected in 1999 and assembled by impoverished and distinguished miners. Operated by a Tijuana and Juarez cartel, smugglers slipped about 30 tonnes of heroin by a tunnel.
"We all know that they have entrance to apparatus such as hydraulic lifts, elevators, generators, H2O pumps," pronounced Ramona F. Sanchez, a mouthpiece for a Drug Enforcement Agency in Phoenix. "It's not your collect and trowel operation."
(Additional stating by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix; Editing by Kieran Murray)
News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/mexico-drug-gangs-ante-high-tech-tunnels-121543478.html
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