A US Border Patrol canine unit discovered a cross-border drug tunnel in Tecate, east of San Diego, on Monday 3 December 2007.[1] A Border Patrol agent heard noise from a 30-foot trailer parked about 360 yards north of the border, peered inside, and saw a pistol-toting man disappear into a hole as the trailer proved half-full of packaged marijuana.[2]
The passage was fitted with lights, wood supports and ventilation.[1] A later official account put the tunnel at 1,300 feet long, equipped with lighting and water extraction pumps, running from a two-story warehouse in Mexico to a fenced lot about a quarter-mile north of the border.[3] Authorities found seven tons of marijuana in 888 packages inside a 30-foot shipping container placed over the tunnel opening on the US side.[1][3] The first account had estimated the haul at 10,000 pounds before the later figure was reported.[2][1]
Second opening, no arrests
That afternoon, after US counterparts notified them, Mexican authorities found the tunnel’s southern opening in a two-story warehouse about 100 yards south of the border in Tecate.[1] The man with the pistol escaped through the tunnel opening and no arrests were reported on either side.[2][1] A joint tunnel task force of the DEA, immigration agents and the Border Patrol, working with DEA officers in Tijuana, the Mexican military and Tecate municipal police, dismantled the tunnel.[3] US and Mexican authorities said they were jointly investigating, and it was unclear whether the tunnel was fully completed.[2]
The deputy police chief of Tecate, Jose Juan Soriano Pereira, 35, was shot dead in his home early the next morning, one day after the discovery.[1] Investigators were examining whether the killing was linked to the tunnel, and that killing is a separate event left out of this report.[1]
