Via the BBC: US-Canada drug tunnel uncovered
Police in the United States have shut down a 360ft (120 metre) drug-smuggling tunnel under the US-Canadian border.Three men from the province of British Columbia in Canada were arrested in the US and charged with drugs offences.
The tunnel, which emerged in the living room of an abandoned home on the US side, is the first to be discovered along the US-Canada border.
It was only used briefly to smuggle marijuana, police say, but would also have been used to move people and guns.
Drugs gangs from British Columbia smuggle millions of dollars’ worth of Canadian marijuana to the US every year.
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The tunnel, which was equipped with lights and ventilation, is thought to have taken about a year to construct. It was lined with wood and reinforced with concrete and metal. A small cart had also been installed to move goods and people.
“It was well built, probably one of the most sophisticated tunnels we’ve ever seen,” said Rod Benson, of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
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More than 30 tunnels have been discovered running from the US across the border to Mexico.
More from the Seattle Times: Alleged smugglers across border dug their way into trap
The tunnel is about 360 feet long and was built with an estimated 1,000 2-by-6-foot wooden supports and rebar. Authorities said it had electricity and ventilation. The passage leads from a Quonset hut sandwiched between greenhouses and a large white house on the Canadian side of the border, beneath two roads and ends beneath the living room of a home on the U.S. side.
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The tunnel is about a quarter-mile east of the Aldergrove/Lynden border-crossing station.
The three men began using the tunnel to carry shipments of marijuana across the border earlier this month, Benson said. Authorities seized about 200 pounds of marijuana that had been transported through the tunnel, Benson said. It was not immediately known if that represents all of the marijuana brought through the tunnel.
The three men charged — Francis Devandra Raj, 30; Timothy Woo, 34; and Jonathan Valenzuela, 27 — are all from Surrey, B.C. They were arrested after authorities said they carried 93 pounds of marijuana in hockey and garbage bags through the completed tunnel.
