Tunnel Vision

Deep below the U.S. Mexico Border are scores of illegal tunnels used t smuggle weed, opioids –even humans. The Border Patrol's "Tunnel rats" are on the case.

- By Jesse Will

Eighteen feet underground, the air is humid, warm, and thick. I’m on my hands and knees inside a drug-smuggling tunnel between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, that’s three feet in diameter, with barely enough room to turn around.

There isn’t a dose of CBD oil massive enough to make the place feel remotely comfortable; by comparison, the back middle seat on a full United commuter plane seems as spacious as center field.

But for U.S. Border Patrol agent Lance LeNoir, this is normal—this is the office. LeNoir, a 50-year-old son of a cop from backwoods Oklahoma, heads up the five-man Confined Space Entry Team, San Diego Sector, which is tasked with finding, mapping, and “remediating”—or closing off and destroying—drug-smuggling tunnels throughout Southern California. The team, in existence since 2010, is colloquially known as the Tunnel Rats—an homage to the U.S. forces who flushed out Vietcong tunnel complexes during the Vietnam War.

LeNoir creeps through the tunnel ahead of me, wearing hard-knuckle gloves and tactical pants with pads that protect his knees, one of which was reconstructed in three surgeries. He wears a helmet with a communications system onboard; on his back is a rucksack filled with tools; at his side is a 40-caliber Heckler & Koch P2000 service revolver. He stops to explain that his team has investigated so many of these tunnels that they’ve started to recognize the narco-trafficking construction teams who built them, from clues like nailing patterns, the types of wood used to shore up the walls, even the severity of their keystone arch.