Mexican police may have found a 'homemade bazooka' used to launch drugs across the border

Mexican national security commission

A Mexican federal-police officer with a cannon-laden van seized in September 2016.

Earlier this week, Mexican federal police in Sonora came across a panel van with modifications and additions that allowed it carry a "cannon" possibly used to launch drugs over the border into the US.

According to a release from the federal police, officers came across the van while it was parked in northwest Sonora state's Agua Prieta municipality, which borders Arizona and Texas. The van was found without license plates and its doors were open.

Inside the vehicle, authorities found "an air compressor, a gasoline motor, a tank for storing air and a metallic tube of approximately 3 meters in length (homemade bazooka)."

The "unit," as the release referred to it, also had a cut in the end that could have allowed the metal tube to be hooked up to launch projectiles, possibly across the border.

The vehicle in question was linked to a car theft in Hermosillo, Sonora, according to an investigation dated July 1 this year.

Days before, authorities in the same area reportedly found a vehicle with similar additions.

US authorities have said since 2012 that drug traffickers have made use of such cannons. Cans and packets of marijuana, cocaine, and crystal meth have been discovered on the US side of the border, and, according to Mexican newspaper Reforma, those projectiles can be launched from 200 meters inside Mexican territory.

Mexican national security commission

Mexican federal police with a homemade cannon and other components found in a van near the US border in mid-September 2016.

The area around Agua Prieta has been the location of both high- and low-tech smuggling attempts. In the late 1980s, the Sinaloa cartel, under the direction of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, built one of its first "narco tunnels" there, running about 200 feet between a home in Agua Prieta and a cartel-owned warehouse in Douglas, Arizona.

"Tell [the Colombians] to send all the drugs they can," Guzmán ordered after the tunnel's completion.

More recently, in 2011, would-be smugglers a few miles west of Agua Prieta made a more humble effort to get drugs over the border: They were observed setting up a catapult just south of the border fence. Mexican authorities moved in and seized the catapult and about 45 pounds of marijuana.