A 60-foot long tunnel that would go under the border wall was discovered in Hidalgo, Texas.
Border Patrol agents found the tunnel, which was under construction, and contacted the president of the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District 3 to help destroy it, according to KXXV, a local ABC News affiliate.
“You’ve seen them on the news in Arizona and New Mexico and stuff like that, but I’ve never seen one in the Valley,” Orthal Brand Jr. of the Water Improvement told KXXV. “That’s the first one I’ve seen that’s in our back yard.”
The tunnel was previously undiscovered because it’s at the bottom of a 30-foot embankment and can only be seen from the Rio Grande River. Brand said destroying the tunnel was difficult without endangering equipment or workers using the equipment.
“It’s hard for me to put a piece of equipment on an edge of a 30-foot sand cliff and reach down and try to collapse something without putting my own piece of equipment and my own operator at risk,” he told KXXV.
Brand plans to work with Border Patrol and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to destroy the tunnel.
This newly discovered tunnel in Texas comes on the heels of a report from CBS news last week that border patrol agents had discovered at least 230 tunnelsleading under the border between Mexico and U.S. border. That report stated the tunnels led to either California or Arizona, but we now have proof there may be even more in Texas.
“This is already in place built by the cities to drain water. What they’re building is tapping into this and they’re building an illicit tunnel,” Deputy Patrol Agent Kevin Hecht told CBS.
CBS also reported that earlier this month, “the Mexican federal police discovered a tunnel that accessed a sewer system that flows into the United States and just last month Border Patrol sealed an unfinished tunnel that crossed into Arizona.”
Just a week before the CBS report, ABC News reported that border patrol agents in Arizona found a large group of migrants were discovered in tunnels underneath the border wall.
“Migrants can be seen marching toward Border Patrol agents by the hundreds,” ABC reported. “Smugglers dug a series of seven holes, only a few feet long beneath the steel border fence, with hundreds going beneath the wall and a smaller number clambering over it.”
Patrol agents who found the latest tunnel in Texas brought photos of it to a meeting with President Donald Trump during a recent visit.
Via DailyWire
