INSIDE THE TUNNEL: BOYS USED IN DRUG-SMUGGLING ROUTE

EL PASO -- It is a tunnel straight out of "The Shawshank Redemption."

Mexican drug cartels used boys and small adults to dig a tunnel
crawling the width of the Rio Grande. Through it, smugglers would
bring contraband to the United States, officials said.

Border Patrol agents thought the river would be an obstacle to
building tunnels in El Paso and east of the city.

They were wrong.

Agents were surprised Friday to find a cross-border tunnel extending
underneath the Rio Grande from the Mexican side to a maze of storm
drains on the U.S. side.

"El Paso sector hasn't seen anything like this before," said Joe
Perez, a Border Patrol agent at the site.

The El Paso sector covers all of New Mexico and West Texas. The Border
Patrol has discovered more than 100 tunnels along the U.S.-Mexico
border in Arizona and California.

The man-made tunnel is the first of its kind in the El Paso sector.
Its opening -- in the concrete wall of a storm drain -- is smaller
than a manhole, with a diameter of about 20 inches.

"You can probably just get your head and one of your shoulders in. You
have to be pretty small," Perez said. "So they would also use a lot of
children to smuggle."

Inside the tunnel, the space is more ample. The air cools off but
becomes more suffocating. It smells like a fish factory, and insects
fly around.

Smugglers possibly endured smells of rotten meat, moldy cheese and
other odors of decomposed food.

"It's a way of life for these smugglers. They are very ruthless. They
are very ingenious. They don't think of the lives they are putting in
danger," Perez said.

Water with algae ponds in the storm drain near the Bridge of the
Americas where the tunnel hid. The walls inside the storm drain and
tunnel opening throw back the echoes of any footsteps.

The echoes were probably what gave away a 17-year-old boy from Mexico
who was found nearby early Friday.

Border Patrol agents became suspicious when they heard noises around
the storm drain and used electronic devices to find the tunnel.

"Usually they won't use these tunnels for people to cross," Perez
said. "These, they will reserve for narcotics."

More than 200 pounds of marijuana were found in the tunnel. Perez said
marijuana is what they suspect had been smuggled through the tunnel
because other drugs would go bad in the humid conditions.

A specialized Border Patrol team discovered that the tunnel traveled
underneath the river to the grassy embankment on the Mexican side,
where a square hole is visible. The team used a breathing apparatus to
explore the tunnel.

Smugglers dug the tunnel two feet under the Rio Grande, Border Patrol
agents said. Because the riverbed is covered in concrete, water did
not enter the tunnel, which allowed smugglers to continue excavating
dirt.

Perez said the Border Patrol had not noticed the man-made tunnel
before because smugglers would not come out of it near the border.

Instead, they would navigate the arteries of the storm-drain system of
El Paso. These spacious tunnels lead to places such as Paisano Drive
and the University of Texas at El Paso.

Border Patrol agents said they do not know how long the tunnel has
been in place or how long it took to build.

In the 1994 film "The Shawshank Redemption," an inmate tunnels his way
out of a prison by excavating a length of five football fields in two
decades. Perez said many hours of labor were put into digging the Rio
Grande tunnel, about the length of half a football field.

Although it is the first man-made tunnel in this area, smugglers in
the past have used storm drains to cross from Mexico into the United
States, Perez said.

The city of El Paso has about 300 miles of storm drains. The system
flows down to 19 openings of different sizes on the riverbank.

Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents are keeping an eye on the tunnel while
they find a way to coordinate with Mexican authorities to seal it.