In an apparent bid to deflect criticism of his department’s failure to address border security, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had helped uncover a a 183-foot long subterranean tunnel in Mexicali, Baja California.
“I commend the ICE special agents who worked with their counterparts in Mexico to discover this tunnel,” Mayorkas said in a press release. “Shutting down these tunnels is critical to stopping drug trafficking organizations and ensuring that illicit goods do not make their way into the United States.”
The 4-foot by 3-foot tunnel ran nearly 22 feet beneath the ground with electricity, ventilation, a rail system with a cart, and an electric hoist.
Its opening, at a residence near the border, was 12 feet by 10 feet. However, there was no exit on the US side.
“These types of tunnels enable drug traffickers to conduct illicit activities virtually undetected across the U.S.-–Mexico border,” said Cardell T. Morant, special agent in charge of HSI San Diego. “Discovering and shutting down these tunnels deals a major blow to drug trafficking organizations because it denies them the ability to smuggle drugs, weapons and people across the border.”
The suggestion that the tunnel would curtail drug trafficking, however, seemed a bit optimistic given the border crisis happening in plain sight at the surface.
In the first four months of 2021, border officials already had seized roughly 3.5 tons of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, roughly a ton more than the 2020 total.
On Tuesday, US Customs and Border Protection announced the seizure of 2.8 tons combined of meth and fentanyl at San Diego’s Otay Mesa Commercial Facility, hidden in a shipment of plastic household articles, CBP reported.
The Biden administration’s open-borders policy has made dangerous criminals far more brazen in their efforts following a mass reverse-migration of at least 440,000 illegals during the Trump administration, when ICE was used to actively deport individuals violating US sovereignty.
More than a million illegals are estimated already to have crossed the border on Biden’s watch, many of them compounding a resurgence of the deadly coronavirus, especially in minority communities where vaccine hesitancy is prevalent.
Another million are expected to cross by year’s end. However, the recent passage of a $3.5 trillion budget bill supporting backdoor amnesty for millions of immigrant workers could raise that number even higher.
On Tuesday, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., filed an article of impeachment against Mayorkas for failing to meet the most basic of job expectations.
“Secretary Mayorkas has failed to faithfully uphold his oath and has instead presided over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement, at the expense of the Constitution and the security of the United States,” the article stated.
