Plugging the Pipeline
NOGALES, Ariz.—In the Grand Tunnel, a 15-foot-high concrete storm drain running under Grand Avenue into Nogales, Mexico, the cat-and-mouse game of illegal immigration is alive and well. Migrants and drug smugglers on the Mexican side sometimes use pulleys and jacks to hack through a metal gate meant to keep them out of the United States. And "every time we put a camera down here," says Colin Parks of a specially trained Border Patrol tunnel team, "the smugglers find a way to bust it up immediately."
Tunnels have always been a focus for the Border Patrol, but as things harden above ground, they have become even more scrutinized. Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began filling seven of the largest tunnels discovered on the border with a sand and concrete mix; up until now, most were just plugged at their ends. Here in Nogales, two of the largest known tunnels, the Grand and Morley, must remain intact to allow water to gush north from Sonora during summer monsoons. Last year between July and October alone, Border Patrol agents made 1,704 arrests in them; they also picked up more than a ton of marijuana. As to the Grand Tunnel gate breakthroughs, agents haven't seen one of those in a year.
Confined between dark concrete walls covered with profane Spanish graffiti, agents trained in close combat work in silent groups of three or four, wearing night-vision goggles. They keep a low profile: The tunnels are often prowled by bandits, and two women were raped on the Mexican side last year. The international border is marked only by a yellow line painted on the wall. "You've got to keep your head up," warns agent Manuel Molina, a tunnel team member. "You can walk around the corner here, run into a bandit, and have nowhere to hide."
Before the Border Patrol founded the tunnel team in 1997, these eerie warrens were largely ruled by kids, gangs of homeless children living underground. Some of the largest such tunnels are in San Diego, where a special task force led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses agents with mining training.
"A lot of those [tunnel] kids down here," says agent Gustavo Soto from the Nogales Station, "they're smugglers now."
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