SAN DIEGO—The steady rumble of semitrailer engines is broken only by the screeching and hissing of air brakes along the northbound lane approaching the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, as U.S. Border Patrol agents descend by ladder 18 feet into the narrow shaft of a narco-tunnel once used to smuggle drugs from Tijuana to San Diego.
The commotion on the surface fades to silence as a couple of agents guide two Epoch Times reporters down into the tomb-like darkness.
Michael Sablan, a Border Patrol agent for two decades and a member of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, known as the “Tunnel Rats,” leads the way through the cramped underground passage—about three feet in height and less in width….