Drug smugglers are getting even more creative everyday when it comes to smuggling marijuana, cocaine and other things from Mexico to the United States. In the latest development, law enforcement found smugglers in the border town of Nogales, Arizona bringing drugs into the U.S. for the cost of a quarter. The parking meters on International Street, which hugs the border fence in Nogales, cost 25 cents. Smugglers in Mexico tunneled under the fence and under the metered parking spaces, and then carefully cut neat rectangles out of the pavement. Then their partners on the U.S. would park false-bottomed cars over the spots where the pavement cut outs were. When they were done doing the drug transfer the smugglers would plug the “holes” with jacks. Only if you looked really closely could you see the cuts.
In all the U.S. Border Patrol found a total of 16 tunnels to the 18-metered parking spaces. The pavement now has little neat square patches in it.
"It's unbelievable," Nogales mayor Arturo Garino told Tucson, Arizona ABC affiliate KGUN. "Those are the strides these people take to get the drugs across the border."
Past methods of smuggling have included catapults that launch drugs across the border. "The [smugglers] have tried everything," said Garino, "and this is one of the most ingenious [methods] of them all.
The city, advised by Homeland Security, has agreed to remove the parking meters. Nogales stands to lose $8,500 annually in parking revenue, plus the cost of tickets.
By Ryan Bockmier
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