(Washington Post) NOGALES, Ariz. — They call themselves the Tunnel Rats. Trained in close-quarter combat, psychologically certified to work in confined spaces and armed to the teeth, these four-member teams of Border Patrol agents monitor an elaborate underground warren of dark and dangerous storm drains that crisscross these twin downtowns along the border.
In the past nine months, they have discovered 16 new tunnels dug by smugglers in Nogales to move drugs, migrants, cash and weapons between Mexico and the United States. The number of tunnels sets a new record. A Border Patrol official calls the burst of subterranean activity “startling.”
“It’s Swiss cheese under there,” said Brooke Howells, a supervisory Border Patrol agent and a tunnel teams leader. “They’re constantly burrowing. If you are a smuggler, a working tunnel can be a very lucrative enterprise.”
The digging has become so extensive beneath Nogales that the southbound traffic lane through the international port of entry collapsed.
“Before that, the parking lot at the customs office caved in,” Howells said. “They collapse all the time.”
The tunnelers pop up all over town. Border Patrol agents report that it is not uncommon to see a manhole cover suddenly lift during rush hour and men run out of the hole.
"License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior firepower and superior intelligence. And that's all she wrote."
Why do I have the image of Bill Murray’s “Carl Spackler” character from Caddyshack running through my mind?
Look, this is going to happen even if marijuana were legalized here, because there will still be migrants, cash, guns, and hard drugs to smuggle. But I have to think that digging tunnels isn’t just a dude with a shovel; it’s got to take some money to make a significant tunnel. Legalize marijuana and you remove 60% of the profits from the cartels and maybe they have to cut back on their tunneling budget.
Then we here in America can grow our own and buy our own domestic marijuana and not contribute one cent (or centavo) to Mexican smuggler’s tunneling budget. We might even develop some more interesting hybrids…
“This is a hybrid. This is a cross, ah, Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia. The amazing stuff about this is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on this stuff.” – Carl Spackler
