Drug smugglers swim through sewage canal to reach US

TIJUANA - Frogmen swam through a sewage canal to smuggle drugs from Mexico to the United States, the army said Tuesday.

The route was discovered Monday in the city of Mexicali, an army official said.

A tunnel that began in the garage of a house led to a sewage canal. Traffickers would swim through the muck, then climb down into another tunnel that led to a house on the US side, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On the Mexican side police arrested a man in frogman gear with 25 packages of a synthetic drug, the official said without specifying what the substance was.

Several sets of scuba diving gear were also found.

Mexico's powerful drug cartels use a variety of sometimes surprising methods to smuggle drugs across the border into the United States, especially into California and Arizona.

AFP