A Texas man was sentenced this week to nearly three years in federal prison for his role in a smuggling scheme involving a man-made tunnel, used to covertly transport illegal aliens from Mexico to the U.S.
The tunnel, which connected Juarez, Mexico to El Paso, Texas, was allegedly built by La Nueva Empresa, an international drug cartel. Twenty-year-old Oscar Ivan Carrillo, from El Paso, was sentenced on the basis of his attempt, along with co-conspirators, to connect the tunnel with existing storm drains by digging further tunnels using various hand-held tools — expanding and maximizing human smuggling operations with which they assisted.
