MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Public Safety Secretariat on Thursday paraded 13 suspected Tijuana drug cartel employees, who were arrested while building a clandestine tunnel under the border with the United States, before reporters.

“The tunnel is equipped with the most advanced technology and was presumably going to be used to smuggle drugs, arms and people into the United States,” the secretariat said.

The tunnel, which came out of a warehouse in the border city of Tijuana and did not yet have a U.S. entry point, was approximately 305 meters (1,000 feet) long and equipped with electricity, lighting, a ventilation system and an elevator.

Police arrested 11 adults and two minors in the operation to shut down the tunnel.

The construction workers, apparently bricklayers, are “allegedly linked to the criminal organization run by the Arellano Felix (family),” the secretariat said, adding that the suspects had apparently been working on the tunnel for about two years.

“Mexican authorities, acting on information provided by federal investigators from the multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force, conducted enforcement actions Wednesday targeting” the cross-border tunnel, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said Wednesday in announcing the discovery.

The passageway had a depth of between 27 meters and 30 meters (89 feet and 98 feet).

“The discovery of this unfinished tunnel bears witness to the extraordinary cooperation between all agencies involved in the task force and the Government of Mexico,” DEA Special Agent in Charge Ralph W. Partridge said.

“It is extremely important to the San Diego area and the entire United States that this cooperative effort stopped the completion of this drug smuggling corridor before even an ounce of drugs could be transported through it,” Partridge said.

Last month, Mexican army troops and federal police found a 122-meter (400-foot) clandestine tunnel that was under construction and intended to link Tijuana, which is near San Diego, California, to the United States.

Federal police officers searched the Auto Servicio Express shop in the 20 de Noviembre district, where they found piles of dirt apparently hauled in from another part of the border city.

Soldiers found the unfinished tunnel in a building that was under construction near the Tijuana International Airport.

The tunnel had a lighting and ventilation system, according to the Defense Secretariat, which said six people were arrested at the construction site.

In December 2008, a woman was rescued by U.S. Border Patrol agents from a clandestine tunnel that collapsed as she tried to cross from Mexico into the United States illegally.

The tunnel ran from Tijuana into the United States.

People traffickers and drug cartels often use clandestine tunnels to cross the vast U.S.-Mexican border, which runs 3,200 kilometers (1,988 miles).

In March 2007, Mexican police found a clandestine tunnel crossing under the border between Tijuana and Otay, California.

The tunnel was under construction from the Tijuana side of the border and had penetrated three meters (about 10 feet) into U.S. territory.

Seven people were rescued from a tunnel beneath the U.S.-Mexican border after being trapped for several hours in October 2006.

All seven were trapped in the tunnel connected to the sewerage network when it collapsed near the border crossing into San Ysidro, California, across the border from Tijuana.

In 2005, Mexican police discovered a tunnel, apparently used by people traffickers, linking Mexico and the United States beneath the heavily patrolled and partially walled-off border.

The tunnel, which was located near the wall that separates Mexico and the United States, in an area of Tijuana known as Ciudad Industrial, was sealed off on both sides of the border.

Since the mid-1990s, authorities have discovered tunnels in Tijuana, Tecate and Mexicali, the border cities mainly used to smuggle illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States. EFE