New Amazing Drug Tunnel Found in El Chapo's Border Stronghold

U.S. officials confirmed Thursday the seizure of a tunnel in which just over a ton of cocaine and 7 tons of marijuana were found crossing into the United States from a home in Tijuana, Mexico, various news outlets reported.

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Although it has not been specifically mentioned, the tunnel more than likely belongs to the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman's drug organization that has controlled the border with California for years.

El Chapo is also said to be the “king of tunnels,” as hundreds that have been discovered along the border between Mexico and the United States have been traced back to his cartel.

Guzman himself escaped through a high-tech one-mile tunnel in June 2015. He later said the tunnel cost him over US$8 million. Just before he was recaptured the first time after 13 years as fugitive in February 2014, he was persecuted through a network of tunnels that connected eight of his homes in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, to the city's sewer system, through which he managed to evade being captured until he was caught in Mazatlan, about 130 miles south of Culiacan.

A policeman checks the entrance to a suspected drug tunnel inside a wardrobe in Tijuana April 7, 2016. | Photo: Reuters

The highly sophisticated tunnel measures just over half of mile or about eight football fields, officials said.

The tunnel was equipped with a rail system, air conditioning, lighting and an elevator that ascended into the closet of a home in Tijuana. The tunnel had a one-square-meter hole exiting into a commercial lot in Otay Mesa, California.

"Marijuana is something we regularly find in these tunnels, but not cocaine ... we believe this to be the greatest seizure of cocaine carried out in a tunnel on the border,” U.S. Federal Prosecutor Laura Duffy said.

Seven people were also arrested, but their names were not provided.

This is the third tunnel discovered in the area in the last three weeks and the 75th tunnel discovered in the last five years.