'Tunnel Rats' Patrol Border Storm Drains
Smugglers 'Constantly' Burrow Between Mexico and Arizona
By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
NOGALES, Ariz. -- They call themselves the Tunnel Rats. Trained in close-quarter combat, psychologically certified to work in confined spaces and armed to the teeth, these four-member teams of Border Patrol agents monitor an elaborate underground warren of dark and dangerous storm drains that crisscross these twin downtowns along the border.
Lately, the Tunnel Rats have been busy.
In the past nine months, they have discovered 16 new tunnels dug by smugglers in Nogales to move drugs, migrants, cash and weapons between Mexico and the United States. The number of tunnels sets a new record. A Border Patrol official calls the burst of subterranean activity "startling."
"It's Swiss cheese under there," said Brooke Howells, a supervisory Border Patrol agent and a tunnel teams leader. "They're constantly burrowing. If you are a smuggler, a working tunnel can be a very lucrative enterprise."
The digging has become so extensive beneath Nogales that the southbound traffic lane through
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