U.S. uses robots in smuggling tunnels

NOGALES, Ariz. — As border security has tightened, drug cartels have turned to tunnelling to avoid detection.

Nearly 170 tunnels have been found nationwide since 1990, most along the Arizona and California border with Mexico. The job of searching these networks can be dangerous, so the U.S. Border Patrol is unveiling its latest technology in the underground war — a wireless, camera-equipped robot that can do the job in a fraction of the time.

Tunnel construction ranges from extremely rudimentary, a small burrow dug by hand sometimes only large enough for a person to crawl through, to very sophisticated, including lights, supports to hold up the ceiling and ventilation. They can range from just a few feet stretching from one side of the border to the other, to up to 0.8 kilometres long.

Some tunnels merely go from one side of the border to the other with the contraband being off-loaded in a field or on public land, while others exit into warehouses or homes along the border.

Smugglers have dug dozens of crude tunnels in Nogales, Ariz., that begin in Mexico and tie into the Arizona city’s storm drainage system.

For sophisticated projects, cartels will hire engineers and miners to build the tunnels. A cartel will have a financier or a cell that reports to the cartel bosses and runs the construction. U.S. border officials estimate that the more sophisticated tunnels probably cost between $2 million to $3 million to build.

Smuggling groups use tunnels to move drugs, guns and people who want to sneak across the U.S. border, though traffickers are sometimes selective about what they will move through their tunnels.

Experts say sophisticated tunnels are used for mostly drugs and gun smuggling, though people who don’t want to risk travelling above ground will occasionally be sneaked through those tunnels.

Cocaine and methamphetamine are brought in through the tunnels, but marijuana — which is big and bulky and therefore difficult to move — is the most prevalent drug transported through the tunnels.

Immigrant smugglers use “gopher hole” tunnels made up of huge PVC pipes that are buried underground and span the border, providing enough space through which a person can barely squeeze.

The storm-drain tunnels in places like Nogales are used for both immigrant and drug smuggling.

The majority of tunnels are found by human intelligence, either by Mexican or U.S. authorities patrolling the border and noticing the ground has been disturbed, or through informants who tip authorities to their presence.

So-called tunnel robots have been in use by Border Patrol for several years. They can safely navigate through corrugated pipes, tunnels, and drainage systems while an agent controls the device from the surface, seeing what the robot sees on a hand-held screen.

The robots are used, in part, as a safety measure to keep agents out of harm’s way as tunnels can be poorly built, are prone to collapse and lack proper ventilation. They also can navigate an underground labyrinth in a fraction of the time it would take an agent to explore the tunnel.

Some of the newer robots, which weigh about 5.5 kilograms and can navigate through passageways only several feet wide, are being deployed this year across southern Arizona and California, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.