U.S. News

DHS Seized $45 Million in Cocaine From a Cartel Tunnel Hidden Under a San Diego Strip Mall

By Mike Harper · June 7, 2026

The sign above the entrance read “Buy 4 Less.” Below it, running from Tijuana across the international border and into the store’s floor, was a sophisticated tunnel that federal prosecutors say was used to move one ton of cocaine worth approximately $45 million into the United States.

Federal prosecutors charged four men Thursday after the Department of Homeland Security uncovered the cross-border tunnel in the Otay Mesa district of San Diego, one of the busiest cargo crossing points on the US-Mexico border. DHS investigators said the tunnel included ventilation systems, electrical lighting, and reinforced structural supports — the hallmarks of cartel-financed construction that requires significant investment and technical expertise to build.

The seizure of a full metric ton of cocaine — 2,000 pounds — represents one of the largest single drug seizures in the San Diego sector’s recent history. Cocaine valued at $45 million at wholesale rates would have a street value significantly higher once cut and distributed through regional networks.

Tunnel discoveries at the US-Mexico border have been a consistent feature of drug enforcement operations for decades, but the Otay Mesa area has seen a particular concentration of them. The crossing’s heavy commercial truck traffic makes it a preferred logistics point for cartel operations — the volume of legal trade creates the cover that makes illegal shipments harder to detect through surface inspection. DHS has now discovered more than 200 cross-border tunnels in the San Diego sector since the early 1990s, with increasingly sophisticated construction techniques used in each successive generation.

The use of a retail storefront as the US-side terminus is not unique to this tunnel — it is a documented pattern in cartel logistics, chosen because a legitimate business provides cover for the activity that a vacant lot or warehouse does not. Whether the Buy 4 Less store’s management had knowledge of the tunnel beneath it is part of the ongoing investigation. The four men charged have not been publicly identified by name, and the charging documents have been partially sealed.

Fentanyl has dominated recent cross-border drug enforcement coverage because of its extraordinarily high potency-to-weight ratio. A ton of cocaine requires a significant physical infrastructure to move. The construction and maintenance of this tunnel, and the network required to manage it, reflects cartel investment at scale.