Smuggling tunnel in Naco is longest ever located in Tucson Sector
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CBPFederal agents use flashlights to peer down the concrete shaft of a cross-border tunnel in Naco, discovered after police and federal agents stopped a U-haul truck with 4,700 pounds of marijuana in the back Monday night.
Longer than a football field, a tunnel found in Nogales by federal authorities in February 2014 was the record holder for cross-border smuggling shafts at 481 feet.
But that tunnel has to take a back seat to the one found Tuesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations and Bisbee police hidden beneath a shed near Naco.
In a tweet from the CBP Arizona's Twitter account, officials announced that the Naco tunnel is 905 ft long and the longest ever discovered in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.
The tunnel in Naco is more than three times the length of football field and nearly double the length of the one found in Nogales.
Agents discovered the tunnel after they traced the route of U-haul truck found packed with marijuana to a Naco-area house.
Based on a tip, Bisbee police officers and Border Patrol agents stopped the truck and a drug dog alerted to the presence of drugs.
Inside was 4,700 pounds of marijuana worth around $3 million "bundled and stacked," according to a release from Customs and Border Protection.
Investigators said that the tunnel was highly sophisticated for a border tunnel, shored-up by wooden supports and accessible by a cement shaft complete with a hydraulic lift. The underground corridor is large enough for an adult to stand upright, the release said.
The Naco tunnel is one of 102 tunnels discovered along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border since 1990, most of them between 2008 and 2012.
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