Clandestine Mexico-US Drug Tunnel Unearthed At Old Arizona KFC

SAN LUIS, AZ — A clandestine drug tunnel stretching 600 feet from basement of an old KFC restaurant in Arizona and ending with a trap door under a bed in a home in Mexico was used to smuggle drugs into the United States, U.S. officials said.

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations and the Border Patrol discovered the tunnel last week after Ivan Lopez, the owner of the old KFC restaurant in San Luis, was pulled over in a traffic stop, authorities said at a news conference Wednesday.

Drug dogs aled authorities to a cache of narcotics with a street value of about $1 million in Lopez’s vehicle, authorities said, including methamphetamine, cocaine, fentanyl and heroin. They found the tunnel in a subsequent search of Lopez’s home.

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Authorities said the passageway is 22 feet deep and five feet tall. They believe the smugglers used ropes to pull the drugs from the home in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, to San Luis, Arizona.

Two years ago, authorities in San Diego, California, discovered the longest known Mexico-U.S. drug tunnel, an 870-yard-long passageway authorities said was used to smuggle an “unprecedented cache” of cocaine and marijuana.