N2. Officials Have Discovered Roughly 181 Illicit Passages Under the U.S-Mexico Border
The underground passages have been used by bootleggers and rumrunners to transport illegal contraband for years.
Mexican drug cartels, especially the Sinaloa cartel have turned illicit underground tunnels into an art form.
The Sinaloa cartel built the first cross-border narco-tunnel in 1989. It was a short, narrow, “gopher hole,” barely large enough for a person to crawl through.
Today, Sinaloa’s narcotunnels are engineering marvels, and have many passages that reach as deep as seventy feet and include elevators, electric lights, ventilation ducts, and railway systems exist.
