Some Mexican migrants take an underground route to US

SAN DIEGO -- Armando Reyes climbed over the border fence and prepared for the dash into San Diego. But his smuggler instead led him and four other migrants through a patch of reeds to a smelly drainage pipe, and ordered them inside.

The black sludge reached Reyes's chin as he crawled through the shoulder-width tube. Rats scurried by. Terrified of losing his way in the darkness, Reyes reached for the migrant in front of him and clutched his sneaker.

The stocky 28-year-old from Oaxaca had followed the smuggler into a vast labyrinth of drainage pipes under Otay Mesa, a booming commercial area 15 miles southeast of downtown San Diego.

The 23-mile network leads to more than 500 manholes scattered across about 2 square miles. From these openings, mud-covered migrants crawl out into streets, busy intersections, and parking lots, creating a dizzying guessing game for US Border Patrol agents.

``They're popping up all over the place," said Joe Perez, the agent in charge of the area.

The migrant traffic below truck-clogged streets and new office parks underscores the persistence and desperation of people faced with crossing one of the most heavily fortified sections of the border.

Illegal crossings will soon become even tougher. President Bush is sending 6,000 National Guard troops to the border, Congress is mulling other enforcement plans, and next month this busy stretch of border across from Tijuana will be monitored by remote surveillance cameras.

So the underground beckons.

The tunnels channel rainwater out of flood-prone areas, but when the waters aren't running, the waves of migrants flow.

The cat-and-mouse game took an ironic turn last month when migrants even surfaced outside the offices of the US Border Tunnel Task Force. After that, some manhole covers -- one in a secured parking lot -- were welded shut. One was also topped with three 35-pound bags of rocks and gravel.

But six more manholes, all potential escape hatches, lie unlocked within a block of the federal facility. ``They're all interlinked, so you never know where they'll come up," said David Badger, a Border Patrol supervisor.

Other border cities have wrestled with similar situations, most notably Nogales, Ariz., which is linked underground to Nogales, Mexico, by two large storm-drain tunnels that are patrolled regularly by heavily armed agents.

Border Patrol agents have arrested hundreds of migrants exiting storm drains in the last year, but don't know how many people get through. Some estimate that thousands make it.

The problem has grown serious enough that agents are teaming with San Diego city engineers to create a computer map of the system. Research is also under way to find a way to attach sensors to manholes to alert agents when they are opened. Crews have welded shut about a dozen manholes known to be active migrant funnels.

At the tunnel task force, the federal multiagency group credited with the discovery in January of the longest illegal tunnel ever found under the border, a top official said the storm drains present a unique problem.

``It's not like when you have . . . a drug tunnel. We can't go in there and just fill them up with cement," said Michael Unzueta, the special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.