The Arizona San StarDiggers
Continued from Page One
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 elab
orate, 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 offi
cars 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