A routine traffic stop near the border between Arizona and Mexico resulted in the discovery of a massive tunnel used to smuggle drugs into the United States. Police pulled over Ivan Lopez in San Luis for an "equipment violation." When police searched the trailer he was pulling they found over $1 million worth of illegal drugs, including 261 pounds of methamphetamine, 30 pounds of heroin, 14 pounds of cocaine, and seven pounds of fentanyl.
Lopez, who is a resident of Yuma, was arrested and police obtained search warrants for his properties, one of which was an abandoned KFC which he purchased in April. Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement searched the building, which sat about 200 yards north of the border and discovered a massive tunnel hidden inside.
The U.S. entrance to the tunnel was only eight inches in diameter and did not have a ladder to get down. Authorities said they believe the smugglers used a rope to pull the drugs up from the 22-foot deep tunnel. They said the tunnel was 590-feet long and was accessible by a trap door hidden under a bed inside a home on the Mexican side of the border.
“This tunnel would take this drug trafficking organization a long time to construct and would have been very expensive,” the complaint reads. “Such an endeavor necessarily requires a combination of several individuals on both sides of the border, engaged in an intricate, risky transnational conspiracy to construct such a secretive structure.”
Officials said they are unsure how long the tunnel was being used but speculated it was in operation for a couple of years. They did not say if it was being used prior to the KFC closing down.