Federal agents shut down a newly completed cross-border drug tunnel on the night of 30 October 2013 after a month-long investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the San Diego Tunnel Task Force.[1][2] The passage linked a warehouse in Tijuana with a building in San Diego’s Otay Mesa industrial park, ran nearly six football fields long about 40 feet underground, and had lighting, ventilation and an electric rail system; investigators called it the largest and most sophisticated tunnel found on the southern border in two years.[1][2]
The investigation first surfaced days earlier when Chula Vista police stopped a box truck under surveillance and found about three tons of marijuana inside.[1] On the night of the shutdown, agents recovered more than 2,100 pounds at the Otay Mesa building and another 8,900 pounds, much of it loaded on a departing box truck, at a second warehouse on Brandywine Avenue in Chula Vista; the cocaine came from a van stopped earlier that day.[1] In total the probe seized 17,292 pounds of marijuana and 325 pounds of cocaine, which the authorities valued together at nearly 12 million dollars, the first time cocaine had been tied to a San Diego-area tunnel.[1][3]
Three suspects were arrested and expected to face federal drug charges prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California.[1][3] Two of them, Jose Arturo Mendoza and Juan Pena Osuna, pleaded not guilty in San Diego federal court on 5 November to possession and distribution charges and were held without bail, as did the third, Roman Santos, whose detention hearing was postponed.[2]
