{"id":644461,"date":"2018-11-12T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T14:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=644461"},"modified":"2018-11-15T12:46:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T19:46:10","slug":"as-the-border-wall-grows-smuggling-tunnels-proliferate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/11\/as-the-border-wall-grows-smuggling-tunnels-proliferate\/","title":{"rendered":"As the border wall grows, smuggling tunnels proliferate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The

Sarah Tory \/ for High Country News<\/p>

The Galvez Tunnel has remained open for tours and training since 2009. Many other tunnels have been blocked on the U.S. side but remain open on Mexican land.<\/p><\/div>\n

On a recent Friday in October, Tekae Michael, a Border Patrol agent who handles public affairs, drove a large SUV along the towering corrugated metal fence that marks the U.S.-Mexico border near Otay Mesa, an industrial area southeast of San Diego. To her left lay another fence, topped with concertina wire, creating a 14-mile corridor complete with stadium lighting, hidden motion sensors and surveillance cameras that lent the border an atmosphere of impenetrability.<\/p>\n

But appearances can be deceiving. Michael pointed to where cuts had been made near the bottom of the secondary fence. Dense fog poses another challenge, she added. \u201cIt only takes a minute to get over, and then you can just vanish.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to build a wall \u2014 or reinforce an existing one \u2014 to secure the border above the ground. But how do you secure the ground beneath it? There, Michael admitted, the border looks more like Swiss cheese. Since the early 1990s, 65 tunnels have been discovered in the Otay Mesa area, mostly built for drug trafficking. But human smugglers sometimes use existing storm drains to ferry migrants across, too. In the U.S., finding and dismantling those tunnels (the \u201csubterranean threat\u201d in Border Patrol lingo) falls to a little-known group of agents within the agency \u2014 the Confined Spaces Entry Team, or simply, the Tunnel Rats.<\/p>\n