Going Underground: Robots Patrol Dangerous US-Mexico Border Tunnels Curt Prendergast - Green Valley News
go to original September 19, 2013

The Mexican military offers a rare look inside a sophisticated drug tunnel. The entrance is in a building in a busy business park in Tijuana, just four blocks from the border. An elevator inside a closet goes down to the tunnel, which is nearly four football fields long. It was found after people reported suspicious activity back in February, and it was shut down before it was completed. It would have come out somewhere in San Diego. (CNN)

Border Patrol Agent Tom Pittman gingerly places the robot into a hole beneath a sewer grate, making sure the guiding line doesn’t get tangled, and sets it loose to explore an underground pipe that could be used to smuggle illicit drugs into the United States.

Above ground, another agent feeds the guiding line down to Pittman as yet another agent operates the controls of the Inuktun 150 Pipe Inspection Crawler, one of only two robots used by Border Patrol along the Southwest border.

As part of a periodic check on the underground pipes that run beneath the border fence, the agents were using the robot to search a pipe that opens up near West and International streets in Nogales last week.

They were searching for holes cut into the pipe that would allow smugglers to carry drugs under the border, often in the hands of teenagers who can fit inside the narrow pipes, said Agent Kevin Hecht, deputy patrol agent in charge of the Nogales Station.

Nogales is no stranger to tunnels. In the last two years, agents have discovered 13 tunnels that reached under the border, with another 14 tunnels found by Mexican authorities that didn’t reach the border, he said.

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