DHS technologists continue search for tunnel detection technology.

• Position: SECURITY BEAT: Homeland Defense Briefs - Department of Homeland Security - Brief article

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The Border Patrol in Yuma, Ariz., employed a unique method to locate the latest tunnel used to smuggle drugs and people underneath its fences. A water truck drove over it and caused the clandestine structure to collapse.

The discovery was happenstance, said Edward Turner, program manager of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency.

"They thought it was just a sinkhole until they looked down into it and saw lumber," he said at a border management conference.

Laboratories and agency's such as HSARPA, the Department of Homeland Security's organization dedicated to high-risk technology research, continue to seek scientific means to locate border tunnels. Technology, so far, has not detected any of the dozens of tunnels discovered over the...