Cops find drug tunnel into an old KFC
Arizona passage is big enough to walk through
PHOENIX— Federal authorities have discovered a sophisticated drug-smuggling tunnel that went from a home in Mexico to an abandoned fast-food restaurant in Arizona.
The Homeland Security Investigations division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says it got word in April that there was a tunnel leading to a closed Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in San Luis, Arizona, just about 180 metres north of the border.
Police began trailing the owner of the abandoned building, Ivan Lopez, and arrested him this month after finding several packages of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl in the back of his truck. He is now being held in federal detention without bond
That arrest led to a search at his home and the old restaurant, where agents found a tunnel that led to a house in Mexico and was large enough for people to freely walk through.
“One of the things that tunnelling does tell us is that as we increase infrastructure, resources, patrol, that’s forcing them to go to more costly routes into the U.S.,” Scott Brown, the special agent in charge for HSI, said on Thursday.
Brown said his agency has been seeing more tunnels, which can cost cartels hundreds of thousands of dollars to build. The use of tunnels been brought up by opponents of the proposed border wall, who say tunnels will help smugglers circumvent it.