A lot of the rhetoric and discussion surrounding the border crisis is about the sheer weight of numbers by which people are being allowed to illegally cross the border (when the Biden Administration isn't flying them in) or the sort of people coming in, whether they are criminals or terrorists.
But this can also overshadow how some of these people are getting in. Remember how statistics have suggested there have been approximately 2 million gotaways who entered the United States undetected?
What are the odds that some of them came through via sophisticated tunnel apparatuses that the Mexican drug cartels have dug and built for smuggling purposes?
This isn't necessarily news, but it is something I came across while writing for my day job. Keep in mind too that I had never dismissed the notion of tunnels under the border but only recently looked into it.
According to a Department of Homeland Security report, over 140 tunnels have been discovered crossing from Mexico into the United States since 1990, and since 2008 there has been an uptick in tunneling activity by 80%.
These aren't just crude little holes just below the surface, either.
In 2020, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cooperated with Mexican authorities to uncover a tunnel 70 feet below ground that ran about three-quarters of a mile from Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego, with the entrance hidden in a warehouse with an elevator.
Yes, an elevator.
On top of that, it had electricity, a rail/cart system, ventilation, and a drainage system. Who knew drug smuggling incorporated playing Minecraft in real life?
Hold on, it gets better because similarly complex tunnels were found around the same area in 2021 and 2022, also boasting electrical lighting, rail systems, and ventilation.
Here at PJ Media, we have actually covered other tunnels under the border before. Back in 2016, a 400-yard shaft went from a restaurant in Mexico to a new Calexico house, the 12th found along the California/Mexico border since 2006, and over 75 had been discovered in the past five years.
Shortly after, a 13th tunnel was found, 46 feet below the surface and a half-mile long, starting from the bottom of an elevator shaft of a Tijuana house (did the elevator work in this one like the 2020 tunnel?) and ending in a hole hidden by a dumpster within a fenced-in lot serving as a business front.
Such complex tunnel systems resemble those that Hamas built under Gaza. Hamas spent years and billions in confiscated foreign aid to build elaborate underground systems, making sure they opened up into hospitals, schools, and other civilian structures that would guarantee outcry when Israel struck them in retaliation for Hamas' attacks.
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Hence why the Israeli Defense Forces were pumping seawater into the discovered tunnels, in an attempt to drown the militants out.
I'm not necessarily saying we should do the same thing (although I don't see why not), but these cartel border tunnels clearly demonstrate the necessity for more than just a border wall to prevent people from coming in illegally.
Let's just hope our leaders take this into account when we do get cracking on securing the border.
