字幕表 動画を再生する
-
It's August of 2019 and you're a DEA Agent, patrolling the Southern border after reports
-
of drug activity in the area.
-
To be a little more specific, they're reports of activity from the Sinaloa Cartel – one
-
of the most powerful drug cartels in Mexico.
-
They've been moving literally tons of product here in the last several years, and you just
-
can't figure out how.
-
They're slipping right past you, almost like they're invisible.
-
That's when it hits you: They're not moving past you; they're moving under you.
-
That's because, right under your feet, there's a 4,309 foot (1,313 meters) cartel smuggling
-
tunnel, stretching from Tijuana to a warehouse district less than twenty miles South of San
-
Diego.
-
And we're not talking about a Shawshank Redemption-style tunnel with only enough space
-
to crawl through – the tunnel, on average, is 5.5 feet tall and two feet wide.
-
It's 70 feet (21 meters) below the surface, and comes with a number of sophisticated features.
-
These features include a state-of-the-art ventilation system to keep the subterranean
-
tunnel well-aerated.
-
An impressively effective rail-cart system.
-
A drainage system to prevent any potential flooding in the tunnel.
-
An elevator to the surface, and even a series of high-voltage cables to power the operation.
-
That's because drug cartels seem to excel as three things: Drug trafficking, murder,
-
and covert civil engineering.
-
And this is far from the first time drug cartels have used DIY smuggling tunnels to ply their
-
trade.
-
According to the US Department of Homeland Security, one-hundred-and-eighty-three cross-border
-
tunnels have been built since the start of the 1990s, with many more likely remaining
-
undiscovered out there.
-
The tunnel problem is so pervasive that the Drug Enforcement Agency, Homeland Security,
-
Border Patrol, and Customs Enforcement have created Tunnel Task Forces to deal with the
-
issue.
-
These task forces perform sting operations in tunnel hotspots – such as warehouses
-
in the Otay Mesa commercial district in California, where a number of these drug trafficking tunnels
-
terminate.
-
They're a complex and extremely expensive problem to deal with.
-
Before we get into the history of these tunnels, first, let's get technical.
-
Most illicit cartel tunnels are colloquially known as “gopher holes” – these are
-
more like the aforementioned Shawshank escape tunnels.
-
They're typically less than a hundred feet long, and a tight fit.
-
They're only really big enough for a single person to crawl through.
-
Tunnels like these have been used by everyone from drug smugglers to the Viet Cong, but
-
the Sinaloa Cartel elevated the smuggling tunnel to an art form.
-
They create what law enforcement agencies refer to as “Supertunnels.”
-
These tunnels have been found as deep as seventy feet/twenty-one metres beneath the surface,
-
and are typically tall and wide enough for a person to comfortably walk through.
-
Like the tunnel found in 2019, they're often also technologically advanced.
-
You can expect to find electrical lights, elevators, ventilation systems, and sometimes
-
even built-in tracks for vehicles and carts.
-
Constructing a Supertunnel is an intense, months-long process, and can often cost upwards
-
of one million US dollars to fully complete.
-
This might seem like a costly investment, but considering the Sinaloa cartel is estimated
-
to make billions of dollars every year, it's practically chump change.
-
This, however, doesn't stop the actual tunnel-building process from being dangerous and labour-intensive.
-
The cartel typically lures in low-paid Mexican laborers eager for paying work, then forces
-
them to work night-and-day digging shifts under threat of violence and even death.
-
Dig teams work with electric shovels, working typically in teams of three.
-
They use an impromptu elevator system to lift excess dirt and sand out of the mineshaft.
-
Working at full efficiency – typically achieved by workers being sufficiently terrified for
-
their lives – they can extend the tunnel by five metres/sixteen feet a day.
-
The more workers, the quicker the process tends to go.
-
Experts are then brought in to install the more technical aspects of the Super Tunnel:
-
Like hydraulic pumps, electrical lighting and ventilation systems, and tracks for subterranean
-
smuggling vehicles.
-
After a few months of meticulous planning and back-breaking labour, voila, you have
-
yourself a Supertunnel.
-
Now, how might you use your brand new Super Tunnel?
-
Let's take a look at some examples.
-
The first recorded sophisticated cartel Supertunnel – also known, by the way, as a narcotúnel
-
– was reported to the public in May of 1990.
-
It was a relatively quaint three-hundred feet/ninety-one metres, running from Agua Prieta, Sonora,
-
all the way to Douglas, Ariz.
-
The entrance to this tunnel was hidden underneath a pool table in an unassuming Mexican household.
-
In true Breaking Bad style, the exit point was a secret hatch inside a false drain in
-
an abandoned warehouse.
-
While it wasn't nearly as advanced as a modern-day Supertunnel, it still featured
-
an impressive level of craftsmanship for a first attempt: The tunnel contained an advanced
-
hydraulic pump system that opened the tunnel's secret entrance by making a portion of the
-
ground to rise up by around eight feet.
-
The plan was effective, too – it's believed that, at the lowest estimate, around 2,250
-
lbs (1,020 kgs) of cocaine was smuggled through this tunnel before it was discovered and decommissioned.
-
The mastermind behind this tunnel – and a name you're definitely going to hear again
-
in this video – was Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as “El Chapo”: The legendary
-
ex-leader of the Sinaloa cartel, and the man who put smuggling tunnels on...err, under
-
the map.
-
The 1990s were a heyday for drug smuggling tunnels.
-
Here are some of the Sinaloa cartel's greatest pre-millennium hits.
-
In May of 1993, a partially-completed 1,452 foot (442 meter) tunnel was discovered in
-
Otay Mesa, California, once again coming all the way from Tijuana.
-
This tunnel was more advanced than their first offering: It included air conditioning and
-
electrical power.
-
Three more tunnels were found in Nogales, Arizona, in 1995 and 1999.
-
In an act of cartel theatricality, the 1995 tunnel lead to an exit hidden inside an abandoned
-
church.
-
In 1999, the latter two tunnels were found by law enforcement on the same day.
-
Nogales served as a popular location for the exits of cartel smuggling tunnels, with another
-
one found in a storm drain several months later, and even more scattered throughout
-
the early 2000s.
-
The smuggling tunnels being constructed by the cartel grew significantly more advanced
-
in February of 2002.
-
A 1,250 foot (381 meter) tunnel was discovered behind the fireplace of a ranch house in Tierra
-
del Sol, California.
-
This was the first tunnel to feature rails for small electrical cars, as well as lighting
-
and ventilation.
-
296 lbs (134 kilos) of marijuana were found in the tunnel, but nobody knows exactly how
-
much was transported before the operation was discovered and shut down.
-
The Sinaloa cartel is surprisingly creative in its tunnel placement, with some entrances
-
and exits to these covert passages feeling like they were ripped straight out of a prime-time
-
drama or a bizarre dark-comedy.
-
In addition to being hidden behind fireplaces and in abandoned churches, other locations
-
include empty graves in Mexico, water wells, built directly into rocky hillsides, and even
-
below a seemingly-innocuous mattress laying in a Mexican junkyard, which lead directly
-
into San Ysidro, California, in 2004.
-
Storm drains, like the one in Nogales, are also an extremely popular exit for cartel
-
smuggling tunnels – where drug packages are fed up into the bottoms of parked cartel
-
vehicles for easy and innocent-looking transport.
-
So remember: Next time you're near a storm drain in Arizona, Texas, or California, you
-
don't have to worry about evil clowns, but you may have to deal with an angry member
-
of the Sinaloa cartel.
-
Jury's out on which is worse.
-
The international drug trade is a multi-billion-dollar business, and – as a result – the cartels
-
are highly motivated to get their high-demand product across the border by any means necessary.
-
In the early 2000s, the use of electrical rail carts in these tunnels spiked, massively
-
increasing the quantity of product the cartel personnel were able to move.
-
Drug cartels may be vast and dangerous criminal organisations full of vicious killers, but
-
they really know how to double down on a winning formula.
-
No matter how aware US and Mexican law enforcement became these tunnels, more kept popping up.
-
Considering the expenditure of money and effort on building these tunnels was dwarfed by even
-
a fraction of the profits the cartels could make from using them (even for a short period)
-
it hardly mattered when they were found and shut down.
-
In short, cartels make more than enough profit from these tunnels that they can afford to
-
lose them.
-
Law enforcement is playing a losing game of whack-a-mole with the Sinaloa cartel – they
-
can build and abandon tunnels faster than the police can find them.
-
To give you some perspective on the sheer extent of the cartel's use of drug smuggling
-
tunnels, it would be impossible – and honestly pretty boring – to give you a complete,
-
exhaustive list of all the tunnels created and used since the early 1990s.
-
The cartel has used this technique countless times – and these are just the tunnels that
-
were actually found.
-
There's no way of knowing the true extent of the cartel's tunnelling activities.
-
It's through this sheer amount of practice that the cartels have been able to refine
-
their tunnelling methods to the infrastructural heights they're achieving today.
-
In September of 2018, US authorities even found an uncompleted tunnel that utilised
-
a solar-powered lighting system.
-
So, they may have killed over 60,000 people since 1964, but at least they're environmentally
-
conscious.
-
However, the uses of these tunnels aren't limited to just smuggling drugs across the
-
US-Mexico border.
-
One of their most famous uses in recent memory didn't actually involve drugs at all.
-
This brings us back to infamous drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the kingpin
-
of the Sinaloa Drug cartel.
-
As this video has already shown you, El Chapo invested heavily in the advanced tunnel-building
-
techniques of his underlings, and in 2015, this investment really paid off.
-
In February of 2014, El Chapo had finally been captured by Mexican law enforcement.
-
Because of his notorious history of disappearing into thin air during raids, and escaping from
-
low-security prisons, he was held in the Altiplano prison in Almoloya de Juárez, Mexico – one
-
of the highest security prisons in the country.
-
It seemed like El Chapo's number was finally up, and the Mexican government had struck
-
a devastating blow against the Sinaloa Cartel.
-
It was grounds for celebration.
-
He was under twenty-four-hour surveillance, with cameras in his cell, and a tracking bracelet
-
around his ankle.
-
The Mexican authorities had El Chapo on lock.
-
Until, about a year into his sentence, when El Chapo decided to take a pleasant evening
-
shower.
-
Incidentally, the shower was one of the two legally-mandated camera blind spots in the
-
cell.
-
Guards at the prison noticed he was taking unusually long in there, so decided to check
-
in.
-
El Chapo was nowhere to be found – instead, they found a two-feet-squared hole in the
-
ground.
-
This was the discovery of one of the most spectacular and absurd prison breaks in Mexico's
-
history.
-
Thirty feet/nine metres below the surface, El Chapo's goons had secretly built a 4,921-foot
-
(1,500 meter) long tunnel beneath the prison over the course of several months.
-
El Chapo had cut off his ankle bracelet and descended into his personal escape tunnel.
-
Like many of the more modern tunnels, this one was fitted with electrical lighting and
-
ventilation.
-
It also featured a motorcycle fixed to a built-in track, which El Chapo rode to freedom, breaking
-
the lightbulbs above him as he passed – hours before anyone even realised he was missing.
-
The whole plan was perfectly orchestrated to buy him and his men plenty of time, as
-
he surfaced in an empty cinder block house and made his final escape.
-
The whole plan went off without a hitch.
-
Once again, a secret cartel smuggling tunnel was the answer to El Chapo's prayers.
-
El Chapo has since been recaptured, and extradited to the US to serve a life sentence at the
-
ADX Florence Supermax Prison.
-
Sadly, for him, that's a little too far for even his devoted underlings to tunnel.
-
But under the Sinaloa Cartel's new leader, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, it's unlikely
-
that the tunnelling activities will stop any time soon.
-
After all, why give up on a winning formula?
-
Thanks for watching this episode of The Infographics Show.
-
Already hungry for more Cartel action?
-
Why not check out “Insane Way El Chapo Escaped Prison” and “Crazy Moving Submarine Drug
-
Bust.”
-
Keep watching – we're sure to tunnel into your heart.