Border Report Live: US begins filling in cross-border tunnel

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) -- As the search continues for the people who built a smuggling tunnel from Juarez to El Paso, the U.S. has begun to seal it.

On Thursday morning, a flatbed truck carrying large sacks of cement mix was parked along Gate 28 of the border wall as workers lowered buckets of cement into the tunnel.

In today's episode of Border Report Live, the Border Report team and host Daniel Marin will give viewers a look inside the tunnel and discuss what it was used for and why the cause for concern goes beyond drugs and migrants crossing illegally. Plus, Donald Trump made border security and mass deportations a key component of his re-election campaign, but the president-elect will face some limitations.

U.S. Border Patrol agents from the Confined Space Entry Team discovered the tunnel while inspecting the storm drain system along the border on Jan. 9 in South-Central El Paso.

The tunnel is about 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide and is equipped with lighting, a ventilation system, and is braced with wood beams throughout.

The tunnel starts just off a highway that runs parallel to the border in Juarez and goes under the Rio Grande, the border wall, the American Canal, levees, and a six-lane highway that runs parallel to the border in El Paso.

The end of the tunnel is located off Boone Street, which is next to a water treatment plant.

Homeland Security Investigations officials have vowed to find those who dug it up.

"Special agents with HSI El Paso and HSI Ciudad Juarez continue working closely with our law enforcement partners on both sides of the border to try to identify the individuals and transnational criminal network responsible for the construction and operation of the cross-border tunnel discovered last week," Jason T. Stevens, special agent in charge for HSI El Paso, said in a statement issued Wednesday. “The tunnel will be sealed, but our criminal investigation will continue.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection also said the El Paso Sector will be working closely HSI, FBI, El Paso CBP Office of Field Operations, the El Paso Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Mexican government, and the U.S. Consulate General Ciudad Juarez in determining what to do with the tunnel.

Trump wants to seal the border

The discovery of the tunnel came just days before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has his own plans to seal the border.

Trump is reportedly going into his second term with a stack of executive orders that he plans to sign on Day 1, and many are border-related and undo orders issued by President Joe Biden.

For one, Trump is expected to resume construction of the border wall, something Biden stopped early into his term.

Trump is also expected to bring back some immigration policies from his first term, including reimplementing the Migrant Protection Protocols. More commonly known as "Remain in Mexico," MPP forced asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their case made its way through U.S. courts, only allowed on U.S. soil for court appearances, which happened sparingly.

Critics of MPP say it forced migrants to stay in dangerous, crime-ridden cities on the Mexican side of the border. During it existence, migrant advocates documented numerous cases of migrants being assaulted, raped, kidnapped and even killed as they were force to live in areas controlled by cartels in cities like Juarez, Tijuana and Matamoros.

Trump promises mass deportations

Other action Trump is expected to carry out on his first day is getting rid of the CBP One, which allows asylum-seeking migrants to set up an appointment at one of several ports of entry.

The Biden administration enacted asylum restrictions that require a CBP One appointment and make migrants who enter the U.S. illegally ineligible for asylum. Administration officials credit those asylum restrictions for the significant drop in people being arrested for crossing the border illegally. Newly released CBP shows that the numbers of border arrests in December — 47,326 — was among the lowest for the Biden administration, which also reported the record high in December 2023, with just under 250,000 along the Southwest border alone.

But much of Trump's campaign and subsequent election has centered around the mass deportation of 20 million people illegally present in the U.S.

To carry out those deportations, Trump named Tom Homan, a former head of Immigration Customs and Enforcement, as his "border czar."

Homan, however, has acknowledged resource constraints, and says that initially, they will actually focus on the 1 to 2 million people who are already up for removal. According to CNN, Homan has been trying to "cool" the hype over mass deportations, meeting with Republican members of Congress privately, and instead discussing the limits and the need for more funding from lawmakers.

The Wall Street Journal even called Homan "the realist in the room."

Anyone with information about this or any other cross-border tunnel is encouraged to come forward to report it to the HSI Tipline at 877-4-HSI-TIP (877-447-4847).