US authorities have seized a cross-border tunnel that runs the length of four football fields, following an investigation that netted more than a ton of marijuana and resulted in four arrests.
It extends from a restaurant in Mexicali, Mexico, to a newly built house in Calexico, California.
The tunnel was the 12th completed secret passage that US authorities have discovered along California's border with Mexico since 2006. They have found more than 75 along the entire US-Mexico border in the last five years, mostly in California and Arizona and many of them incomplete.
Drug traffickers allegedly purchased the Calexico property in April for $US240,000 ($A318,937) and finished building a three-bedroom house on the parcel for $US86,000 by December. Prosecutors say the first tunnel shipment occurred February 28, leading to the seizure of 1,350 pounds (612 kilograms) of marijuana in West Covina, near Los Angeles.
The tunnel extended about 300 yards (274 metres) in Mexico from El Sarape Mexican restaurant and ran about 100 yards on US soil to the house in a quiet residential area of Calexico, a city of about 40,000 people located 120 miles east of San Diego.
A US Immigration photo shows an investigator viewing bags of marijuana stored in a room of a newly-built home in Calexico, Calif. March 23, 2016. (AAP) Source: AAP
"This house and tunnel were constructed under the watchful eye of law enforcement," said Laura Duffy, US attorney for the Southern District of California. "For the builders, the financiers and the operators of these passageways, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. We will seize your drugs and your tunnel before you even have a chance to use it."
Two men were arrested Wednesday in Calexico - one at the tunnel house and another at a house believed to have been used to store drugs - and charged drug trafficking crimes, authorities said. Two women were arrested Tuesday in Arizona, including the purchaser of the Calexico house.
