(Photo: Reporter Amy Isackson walks through a drug tunnel found along the Mexico/USA Border at a warehouse January 30, 2006 in Otay Mesa, California. Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images .)
Federal officials will fill in the longest tunnel ever discovered under the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday. Authorities say they'll plug that tunnel in Otay Mesa, and seven others by the end of the month. KPBS reporter Amy Isackson has the story.
Two of the tunnels are in Otay Mesa. There are four in Calexico. And two more in Nogales, Arizona.
Customs and Border Protection Spokesman Mike Friel says all the tunnels have been partially plugged with concrete. He says filling them in on the U.S. side will cost about $2.7 million dollars.
Friel : The light concrete that we're using goes in and expands and fills and hardens to a point where we can ensure that it’s filled-in completely so that no one can gain access to that tunnel.
Friel says the concrete stops at the border fence.
The tunnel that'll be filled tomorrow was unearthed in January 2006. It plunges 85 feet down inside a shed on the Tijuana side before popping up a half-mile away inside an Otay Mesa warehouse.
The other Otay Mesa tunnel was discovered fourteen years ago.
Amy Isackson, KPBS News.
