DRUG SMUGGLERS CREATING TUNNELS

More Secret Passages Between Mexico, U.S. As Borders Tighten After
Sept. 11 Attacks

TECATE, Mexico - It was a typical bedroom with long curtains and a
plush, floral rug -- except that the fireplace wasn't just for
keeping things cozy.

When police removed the metal grill still holding charred logs, they
found a secret tunnel to the United States.

Over the past decade, officials have discovered at least 16 tunnels
along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, all thought to be used for
smuggling drugs. Six have been found since December, and federal law
enforcement officials on both sides of the border say they believe
that five of them started operating after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. This suggests to them that heightened U.S. border security
is driving more smugglers to the underground route.

``We firmly believe there is a direct relation to our fortification
of the border,'' said Vincent Iglio, associate special agent in
charge of the U.S. Customs Service in Tucson.

The passage behind the fireplace was discovered in February in an
isolated ranch house 20 miles east of the Mexican border town of
Tecate. It had rails on which smugglers would send cocaine on
electric carts on a 300-yard journey into the back of a staircase of
a house in Tierra del Sol, Calif.

While it is believed to have gone undetected for 10 years, the other
recently discovered tunnels seem newer and more hastily dug.

One was still under construction when U.S. Border Patrol agents
stumbled upon it last month. Another, found in March, was built to
bypass the entrance of another tunnel that had already been
discovered and sealed with concrete.

The sealed tunnel, found in December, ran 85 feet from a Nogales home
in Arizona to a concrete drainage canal in Mexico, where smugglers
covered the opening with a steel utility plate and resealed it with
concrete each time they used it.

U.S. Customs authorities say they believe it had been operating for
only three months, in which time smugglers moved some $20 million
worth of cocaine and marijuana.

Another tunnel thought to have been put into operation since Sept. 11
and found last month ended in a parking lot near the U.S. Customs
office in Nogales.

Authorities on both sides of the border are looking for more, but it
is a tough challenge.

``We can't go around doing seismic graphs, and we can't check without
a search warrant,'' said Donald Thornhill Jr., a Drug Enforcement
Administration official in San Diego.

The most elaborate tunnel was found 12 years ago. It ran 100 yards
from a home in Agua Prieta, Mexico, to a warehouse in Douglas, Ariz.
It had a rail car and the initial stages of a track, and was accessed
by using hydraulic lifts that raised the entire floor of the home's
game room.

Seven of the tunnels connected to storm drains linking the two cities
named Nogales on either side of the Arizona border.

Years ago, street children lived in the drains and charged smugglers
for the right to pass. Migrants also traipsed through the darkness
until several drowned in a rush of floodwaters and the U.S. Border
Patrol started monitoring the tunnels' openings on the U.S. side.

Thornhill said he did not believe that terrorists would use the
tunnels. ``Drug traffickers have them pretty well locked up,'' he
said. ``It's such a bonanza for them. I don't think terrorists would
be welcome.''

The DEA suspects that the Arellano Felix gang, based in Tijuana, 65
miles west of Tecate, moved as much as 10 tons of drugs into the
United States -- part of it through the fireplace tunnel.