One-ton cocaine bust reveals secret US-Mexico tunnel

Members of Jalisco New Generation cartel used fake retail store in San Diego as front for trafficking drugs, officials say Federal prosecutors have charged four suspects with trafficking more than one ton of cocaine for the Jalisco New Generation cartel using a fake retail store in San Diego as a front for a sophisticated tunnel that ran across the border to Tijuana, Mexico. The defendants include two Mexican nationals and two Americans charged with conspiring to traffic drugs across the US-Mexico border. The suspects, who range in age from 18 to 32, all face sentences that could put them in prison for life. One of them, Gregorio Epifanio Hernandez Lopez, also faces the charge of “constructing, financing or using unauthorized tunnels”. Agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the investigation division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, first began surveilling a San Diego shop called “Buy 4 Less” located near the Otay Mesa border crossing in December of last year, according to a federal criminal complaint filed Monday. The agents suspected the shop of housing a subterranean tunnel. There, the agents observed behavior that “did not appear to be consistent with a normal ret