Lack of curiosity leads to - Nogales drug suspects' lair

by Tim Steller

The Arizona Daily Star

NOGALES, Ariz. - It didn't seem natural to officers who had swooped down on a Nogales home Thursday night that the people next door weren't curiously poking their heads outside.

So yesterday morning the officers did a "knock and talk" - they knocked on the door and asked for permission to search.

Inside they found jackhammers and recently laid tile.

They were evidence of a second drug tunnel under construction next door to one officers had found Thursday night, said Lt. Eddie Cota of the Santa Cruz County Metro Task Force.

The occupants of 170 W. Loma St. apparently had recently opened a hole in the floor and begun excavating a tunnel.

Cota, a Nogales police officer assigned to the task force, said they began covering it up when more than 40 officers appeared at 160 W. Loma.

"As we were working, they were working next door, too," Cota said.

For now, it is unclear whether the completed tunnel and the unfinished one are related.

But officers think the traffickers stopped using the finished tunnel after officers seized three drug loads from vehicles leaving the house at 160 W. Loma.

The first seizure took place March 2 1; the last one May 2 1. They totaled more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana and 1,253 pounds of cocaine.

"When we were working the area, we knew we were being watched by them,- Cota said.

"The next door (tunnel effort) might have been a backup plan."

If it had been completed, the tunnel would have been the fourth found in Nogales this year.

In February, task force officers found two tunnels that led from homes a couple of blocks south of those searched this week.

Most of the tunnels lead to the Nogales Wash, which is covered as into Arizona.

Little water usually flows through the wash, which functions as a thoroughfare -for undocument- and drug traffickers. In I places it is 10 feet high and many wide, framed in concrete.

Nogales police and Border Patrol agents check the tunnels infrequently, perhaps twice a week, Cota said.

Teams of agents trained in ,patrolling confined spaces and dressed to protect their health are assigned to tunnel duty

On the Mexican side, however, members of the Grupo Beta migrant protection force patrol the tunnels daily The Mexican army 1, does so occasionally, too.

Grupo Beta agent Gerardo Estinoza said there are at least 21 entrances to the network of underground washes and drainage tunnels beneath Nogales, Sonora.

Some entrances are so small that drug traffickers would have trouble fitting their drug loads in the openings. But one can walk into other entrances bent slightly over.

"They see us leave, and they enter," Espinoza said.

The smugglers who used the 160 W. Loma house likely had to walk at least a half-hour underground before they reached the appropriate 2-foot-diameter drain pipe.

There, they must have tied their bundles of cocaine and marijuana to ropes.

Inside the house, co-conspirators must have pulled the bundles through the drain pipe, then through the approximately -50-foot, hand-dug tunnel, Cota said. Although the tunnel found Thursday was not particularly elaborate, it represents more than just a whim, Cota said.

"You do have to make your connections to be able to use the wash," he said.

He added that the tunnel was domeshaped, about 3 feet high and 2 feet wide. It's a shape that reduces the risk of collapse, Cota said.

The man at the house when officars served a search warrant Thursday, Jesus Mendoza Padilla, 19, has been charged with endangerment and criminal damage.

The former charge relates to the potential safety hazard of the tunnel, the latter to its construction.

The two people found in the house next door yesterday morning were undocumented aliens and turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Further information on them was unavailable yesterday.

Records from the Santa Cruz Linty Assessor's Office list Arnold ~rales of Tucson as the owner of ~ 160 W Loma home, and Cesar I Martha Ochoa of Nogales as ners of the 170 W Loma house.

Attempts to speak with the hoas were unsuccessful, but irales, owner of the Tucson-based rnor Investment Co., said he leves he still owns the mortgage the 160 W Loma house.

But Morales said another man whose name he didn't know been handling ownership duties about two years.

"I own about 20 properties," ~rales said. "I don't know what ppened to that one."

When asked if he knew anything Dut a drug tunnel, Morales was parently so shocked he hung up ~ phone. He immediately called ck.

"I don't know anything about 'Morales said. "I'm checking with r attorney. I don't think I need e, but I'm checking."

Morales said he didn't feel comtable commenting further witht first consulting his attorneys.

Lt. Raul Rodriguez, commander the metro task force, said investitors will likely pursue the paper A now, using some of the documts uncovered at the house as dl as public records.

But frequently there are straw rchasers and front men involved drug-related properties, Kiriguez said.

The investigators believe the nnel was ordered by a major drugLfficking organization based in )gales, Sonora. But they declined name the organization.

'We have leads, and we know io are the players," Rodriguez

Arizona Star reporter Hanna Miller contributed to this story.