Tijuana Prisoner Says He Was Forced to Dig Drug Tunnel to San Diego Carrie Kahn - NPR.org
go to original February 10, 2014

A Mexican guard at a prison in Tijuana where 17 men are being held on charges they were digging a drug-smuggling tunnel from Tijuana to the U.S. border at San Diego.  (NPR)

LISTEN: Carrie Kahn talks to one of the men who say they were kidnapped and forced to do the work.

More than 75 drug-smuggling tunnels have been discovered under the U.S.-Mexico border in just the past six years, and one of the more intriguing cases involves 17 Mexican men who claim they were kidnapped and forced to carry out the work for months before Mexican authorities found them.

There's always been some mystery surrounding tunnels. Diggers were thought to be well-paid cartel loyalists or, as urban legend goes, laborers killed soon after the tunnel's completion to ensure its secrecy.

I've met one of those 17 men who say they were kidnapped and forced to dig a tunnel last year. He says he was enslaved 35 feet below the border for months and lived to tell his side of the story — from a Tijuana prison.

Read the rest at NPR.org

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