Via:CNN

U.S. authorities have discovered about 30 tons of marijuana that were part of a smuggling operation using a tunnel under the California-Mexico border, officials said Wednesday.

The 600-yard tunnel -- which features a rail system, lighting and ventilation -- connects a warehouse in Tijuana with one in the Otay Mesa industrial area of San Diego, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack.

About 26 tons of marijuana had been transported through the tunnel to San Diego, and 10 of those tons were intercepted Tuesday by authorities as a tractor trailer was transporting the load from the Otay Mesa warehouse, officials said. About five tons were found by the Mexican military inside the Tijuana warehouse and the tunnel, officials said.

Drug cartels on the border have become so powerful and sophisticated in recent years that many Mexican communities and areas along the border are patches of uncontrollable violence, experts have said.

"It's not a good day for the cartels," said ICE director John Morton. "They now can't move that size of drugs without digging a tunnel for 600 yards. It backfired on them.

"Obviously this is a cartel and organized drug smuggling of the highest order," Morton added. Authorities weren't able to identify Wednesday which cartel was behind the tunnel operation, he said.

The smuggling was active for about a month until this week's seizure. The tunnel was rather small, and an individual can't stand up in it, Morton said. He described the railway as "crude."

The seizure was also unusual because authorities made their bust while the smuggling was active, Morton said.

"We caught them in the act," Morton said. "We find these tunnels and they're usually abandoned."

The seizure was also one of the largest on the California-Mexican border, officials said.

"What's unusual about this one is the amount of marijuana found as part of this investigation," Mack said.

The 30 tons is considered significant by U.S. and Mexican authorities even though Mexican authorities seized 105 tons of marijuana in Tijuana last month, the largest Mexican bust in recent years, Mack said.

"So there's been some pretty big drug busts," she said. "We're not letting our guard down."

In the past four years, 75 smuggling tunnels have been discovered on the U.S.-Mexican border, most of them in California and Arizona, authorities said. In all, about 125 tunnels have been found since the early 1990s, when authorities began keeping count, with just one of them on the U.S.-Canadian border, Mack said.

Authorities will be investigating the owners of the Tijuana and San Diego warehouses, officials said.

A special U.S. border tunnel task force hunts for underground smuggling operations in and around San Diego. The task force consists of agents from ICE, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Border Patrol, and they also work with Mexican authorities, Mack said.

In its surveillance of the Otay Mesa warehouse, the task force noticed suspicious activity Tuesday when they saw a tractor-trailer leave the facility. Agents followed the truck to a Border Patrol checkpoint at Temecula, California, and authorities found 10 tons of marijuana hidden in cardboard boxes on pallets, said ICE director John Morton.

A married couple driving the truck was arrested, he said.

The task force became the first of its kind in 2003, when it was assembled to deal with a growing number of underground smuggling routes on the California-Mexico border. The unit was also assembled as part of a post-September 11 security concerns, Mack said.

The longest tunnel discovered, found in 2006, had a length of seven football fields. That tunnel also connected warehouses in Otay Mesa and Tijuana.

The task force uses robots to scout out a newly discovered tunnel before agents are sent into it. Federal agents are trained like miners on how to negotiate confined spaces, and the San Diego-Mexico region is even used to test the latest ground-penetrating technology to detect tunnels, including by the U.S. military, Mack said.

The sophisticated tunnels -- with lighting, oxygen pumps and rail lines -- are typically used to ferry drugs from Mexico to the United States. The more rudimentary tunnels are just big enough to smuggle people into the country, Mack said.

"We've also been enjoying an unprecedented cooperation with Mexican law enforcement in recent years," Mack said. "So we get a lot of information from the Mexicans, and vice versa."

A U.S. border-patrol agent on duty near Campo, 60 miles east of San Diego, Calif.

When U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled on Wednesday that key provisions of Arizona's new anti-immigration law were unconstitutional, she could have also declared them unnecessary. That is, if the main impetus behind the controversial legislation was, as Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said when she signed it in April, "border-related violence and crime due to illegal immigration." The fact is, despite the murderous mayhem raging across the border in Mexico, the U.S. side, from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, is one of the nation's safest corridors.

According to the FBI, the four large U.S. cities (with populations of at least 500,000) with the lowest violent crime rates — San Diego, Phoenix and the Texas cities of El Paso and Austin — are all in border states. "The border is safer now than it's ever been," U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Lloyd Easterling told the Associated Press last month. Even Larry Dever, the sheriff of Arizona's Cochise County, where the murder last March of a local rancher, believed to have been committed by an illegal immigrant, sparked calls for the law, conceded to the Arizona Republic recently that "we're not seeing the [violent crime] that's going on on the other side."  

Consider Arizona itself — whose illegal-immigrant population is believed to be second only to California's. The state's overall crime rate dropped 12% last year; between 2004 and 2008 it plunged 23%. In the metro area of its largest city, Phoenix, violent crime — encompassing murder, rape, assault and robbery — fell by a third during the past decade and by 17% last year. The border city of Nogales, an area rife with illegal immigration and drug trafficking, hasn't logged a single murder in the past two years. 

It is true that Phoenix has in recent years seen a spate of kidnappings. But in almost every case they've involved drug traffickers targeting other narcos for payment shakedowns, and the 318 abductions reported last year were actually down 11% from 2008. Either way, the figure hardly makes Phoenix, as Arizona Senator John McCain claimed last month, "the No. 2 kidnapping capital of the world" behind Mexico City. A number of Latin American capitals can claim that dubious distinction.

An even more telling example is El Paso. Its cross-border Mexican sister city, Ciudad Juárez, suffered almost 2,700 murders last year, most of them drug-related, making it possibly the world's most violent town. But El Paso, a stone's throw across the Rio Grande, had just one murder. A big reason, say U.S. law-enforcement officials, is that the Mexican drug cartels' bloody turf wars generally end at the border and don't follow the drugs into the U.S. Another, says El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles, is that "the Mexican cartels know that if they try to commit that kind of violence here, they'll get shut down." 

Which points to perhaps the most important factor: the U.S. has real cops — not criminals posing as cops, as is so often the case in Mexico — policing the border's cities and states. Americans and Mexicans may call their border region "seamless" when it comes to commerce and culture, but that brotherly ideal doesn't apply to law enforcement. That's especially true since state and local police are backed along the border by the thousands of federal agents deployed there. Thus the tough Arizona law — which seeks to allow local and state police to check a person's immigration status, a provision that Judge Bolton agreed opened the door to racial profiling by officers, and requires immigrants to carry their documents at all times — was sparked by largely unfounded fears.

Arizona law-enforcement officials say they believe the Cochise County rancher, Robert Krentz, was killed by an illegal immigrant — perhaps a coyote, or migrant smuggler — or a drug trafficker. His last radio transmission home as he inspected his property indicated he was helping a struggling person he believed to be one of the migrants who regularly trespass private land while crossing into the U.S. But while such assaults are hardly unheard of along the border — and while it's hardly irrational to worry about Mexico's violence eventually spilling into the U.S. — they have hardly risen to a level that justified the draconian Arizona bill. (In fact, if an illegal immigrant did murder Krentz, it would be the first time in more than a decade that a migrant has killed an American along the border's Tucson, Ariz., sector.)

"There's a real disconnect between emotions and facts when it comes to the border," says El Paso city councilman Beto O'Rourke. "You've got a lot of politicians exploiting this fear that the Mexicans are coming over to kill us."

The Arizona law, which Judge Bolton also said infringed on federal jurisdiction, may be a product of border bluster. But it has more than succeeded in getting Washington's attention. Even though the Obama Administration was one of the plaintiffs in the suit against the law, the President is sending 1,200 more National Guard troops to the region this weekend. What's more, our broken immigration system — and the federal government's feckless failure to address it — is a front-burner issue again.

The nation's border is actually a safe place. The nation's debate about it, at least politically, is anything but.

A judge says two agents resorted to ‘intentional infliction of force’

Border guards stationed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport had good reason to be suspicious of a certain Nigerian passenger who arrived at the customs counter on March 3, 2002. The man’s ticket, for a one-way trip from Lagos, was purchased the day before—in cash. His lips were dry and pasty, a common trait among drug smugglers who swallow their deliveries. And when asked why he was travelling to Canada, the man, Esemuede Henry Idada, said he was doing research for a new business venture: exporting frozen turkeys to Africa.

To quote Federal Court Judge Russel Zinn, it was an “extremely unusual” explanation.

But eight years later, it is the Canada Border Services Agency that has some explaining to do (and some damages to pay). Even though the judge agreed that Idada was a legitimate target for further investigation—including a strip search and a stool sample, used to detect narcotics—two agents were a tad rough for the court’s liking. They resorted to “intentional infliction of force,” Zinn ruled, and then tried to “minimize” their actions on the witness stand. “It is apparent from the treatment that Mr. Idada received that some officers do think they can act without repercussions,” the judge ruled. “While it should go without saying that the Customs Act does not give them carte blanche, I think a reminder is warranted.”

The first “intentional infliction of force” occurred when Idada, a naturalized U.S. citizen, showed up at the counter. As he flipped through his wallet looking for his passport, an impatient officer, Nick Kostovski, “jerked” it from his hand and said he didn’t have time for this “nonsense.” A few hours later, Idada was pinned to the floor and handcuffed because officer Dan Tangney feared that his briefcase was a potential weapon. “The force used was not justified and not reasonable,” the judge ruled. For the record, Idada’s stool samples came back clean. He was not sneaking drugs into Canada, and he really was dabbling in the frozen turkey business. The feds now have until the end of April to agree on a dollar figure for damages.

Cars pass a welcome sign at the border crossing between the USA and Canada in Blaine, Wash. Some Canadians drive across the border to fly out of the USA because fares are lower.

Never mind that he has to drive roughly 90 minutes to board a plane. The trip is usually $300 cheaper than if he'd flown out of Montreal.

"The client agrees to pick up the expenses, but this saves them money," says Khanna, 38, who has his own consulting firm. "It's an hour and a half out of my time, but it keeps the client happy, and if the client is happy, they keep me employed."

Khanna isn't the only Canadian making frequent treks across the border to catch a flight. A growing number come for lower fares, fewer hassles with airport security — because they are flying domestically inside the U.S. instead of coming from abroad — and for the smaller U.S. airports that can be easier to navigate than ones in Canada's big cities.

"We're 30 miles from the border, so there's always been a base of Canadian business at this airport," says Brian Searles, director of aviation for the Burlington airport, where 40% of the passengers are Canadian. "But what's happened in the last few years ... is a significant increase in that business."

The Canadian Airports Council estimates more than 2.5 million Canadians use U.S. airports.

People in eastern Canada can make their way to Bangor, Maine, while would-be fliers in Quebec drive to Burlington or Plattsburgh, N.Y., says Tony Pollard, president of the Hotel Association of Canada. Those living in Windsor can cross a bridge to Detroit, while travelers living in Toronto might head to airports in Buffalo or Syracuse, N.Y.

"It doesn't really matter if you have to travel an hour or an hour and a half, people will do it (to save) money," Pollard says.

A survey by his organization found 18% of Canadians plan to travel to the U.S. to fly in 2010.

U.S. airports make great efforts to woo and welcome Canadian travelers. Plattsburgh International Airport, which says that 85% of its passengers are Canadian, bills itself as "Montreal's U.S. airport" and sometimes broadcasts a Montreal radio station, with songs in French and English, in its terminal.

Others in the travel sector have taken notice. Low-cost carrier Allegiant Air started service out of two airports — Plattsburgh and Grand Forks, N.D. — to tap into interest from Canadian travelers.

Taxes, fees add to higher costs

The Canadian traffic is good for those living in the U.S., says Tom Long, Plattsburgh's airport manager.

"It opens the door for our locals to be able to fly to Florida" and other destinations, he says.

The main reason Canadians make the trek is to save money. Fares between U.S. cities can be hundreds of dollars less than flying directly from a Canadian city.

Even with gas, long-term parking and possibly a night's stay in a U.S. hotel, some travelers say they still come out ahead.

Higher fees paid by Canadian airports and Canadian taxes combine with less competition among carriers to make for costlier plane tickets out of Canada. Also contributing: The traditionally weaker Canadian dollar has been holding its own against the U.S. dollar recently.

Canada's travel industry isn't happy with losing locals who'll drive across the border to fly.

"We're tremendously concerned," says Daniel-Robert Gooch of the Canadian Airports Council. "We have higher fees and taxes. All these things add up to make for a more expensive ticket."

Jay Udow always checks how much it will cost him to fly to the U.S. from his local airport in Toronto. But he frequently winds up driving to Buffalo to head to cities in other parts of the U.S.

Even though Buffalo offers fewer non-stop flights to fewer destinations than he can get in Toronto, Udow says, he checks.

"And then I make a call based on price and convenience as to which way I should do it," he says. "But 50% of the time, I end up choosing Buffalo over Toronto."

Making a trip 'affordable'

It's an open secret in many Canadian cities that crossing the border to fly can be cheaper, says Udow, who does marketing and product development in the toy industry and travels from Buffalo for both business and vacations.

But Udow says he also drives the roughly 60 miles to and from Buffalo to take advantage of a smaller airport that he finds easy to get through. And he says he prefers to avoid the lengthy airport screening that comes with flying from Canada to the United States.

"There's much less hassle and aggravation," he says.

Brandon Smith, 29, also often drives from his Toronto home to Buffalo to fly to such cities as Fort Lauderdale or Las Vegas.

Smith, a trustee in bankruptcy cases, says those Buffalo-based flights have saved him thousands of dollars the past five years.

"At the very least, it made a trip affordable where I wouldn't have taken the trip had that option not been available," he says.