Record-breaking drug smuggling tunnel discovered on US-Mexico border, 276 meters long

This week, U.S. border police discovered a secret underground tunnel for smuggling drugs from Mexico to the United States in Naco, a small town near Mexico in Arizona. The tunnel is 905 feet (about 276 meters) long and is the largest drug smuggling tunnel uncovered by U.S. authorities so far. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection jointly announced that local police in Naco, Arizona, received a tip-off and entered a private house to search, and then discovered the longest cross-border drug smuggling tunnel in history. The tunnel, hidden under the liftable false floor in the house, is about three football fields long, breaking the previous record of the longest tunnel of 481 feet. The hole is large enough for an adult to stand in and out, and it has wooden supports and complete facilities such as ventilation and electric lighting systems, and even a hydraulic lift. The police also arrested two suspects at the drug trafficking site and successfully intercepted 4,793 pounds (about 2,174 kilograms) of marijuana loaded on a truck, with a market value of about $3 million. Arizona police officer Robert Coronado said the newly discovered tunnel in Arizona involves national security issues and needs to be thoroughly searched by Customs and Border Protection to ensure that all access points are safe. Currently, multiple federal agencies are jointly investigating the case. After the United States and Mexico have cooperated in recent years to intensify the fight against drug crimes along the 2,000-mile border, drug lords have secretly developed an underground drug trafficking method. Since the U.S. Border Patrol discovered the first drug trafficking tunnel in 1990, 168 cross-border drug smuggling tunnels have been seized so far, of which more than 80 have been destroyed since 2006.