SAN DIEGO-
Seven people were rescued Tuesday after they became trapped in a makeshift tunnel running between Mexico and the United States, authorities said.
Border patrol agents noticed about 14 people gathering on the Mexican side of the fenced border shortly before 7 a.m. and a short time later saw a man and a woman “coming up out of the ground” on the U.S. side, Border Patrol spokesman Robert Harvey said.
The agents arrested them near what appeared to be a crude tunnel made of concrete. They noticed a third person stuck in the opening, Harvey said.
“The people behind him couldn’t get out,” he said.
City firefighters were called to the area, which borders Tijuana, and used jackhammers to widen the hole. Three men and two women were inside the tunnel, which stretched under the border fence, Harvey said.
“It did appear that they were crawling north,” he said.
All were freed within 90 minutes and none required immediate medical care, fire dispatchers said.
Harvey said he did not know whether the tunnel was specially built or was some sort of existing culvert.
But such attempts at crossing are frequent enough that there is a special federal group, the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, to investigate.
“These tunnels are notoriously dangerous, poorly built, and we know that the risk to anyone in there is incredibly great” both from cave-ins and lack of oxygen, Harvey said.
