Feds Charge Cartel's 'Engineer' With Terrorism for Digging a Tunnel to a Fake San Diego Store

Federal prosecutors in San Diego just answered one of the cartels' oldest tricks with the law usually aimed at terrorists. A grand jury has indicted the man they say engineered a tunnel from Tijuana to a fake store in Otay Mesa, and the case isn't only about drug smuggling. It's a terrorism case.

Luis Manuel Hernandez Victoria, 60, of Guadalajara, Mexico, known as "El Ingeniero" (the Engineer), is charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California announced Thursday. Prosecutors say he designed and built the tunnel for the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, better known as CJNG.

"Hernandez engineered his own downfall," said U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon.

Why a tunnel is now a terrorism case

That charge exists because of a decision made a month into President Trump's second term. Federal law (18 U.S.C. 2339B) makes it a crime to give "material support" to a group the secretary of state has formally named a foreign terrorist organization. On Feb. 20, 2025, the State Department put CJNG on that list, along with the Sinaloa Cartel, Tren de Aragua, MS-13 and four other groups, carrying out Trump's executive order to treat cartels as terrorists.

Without that designation, a case like this would rest on drug and tunnel charges. Now it carries those plus a terrorism count worth up to 20 years on its own. Think of it like a getaway driver: once the gang is legally a terrorist group, the guy who builds the escape route is helping terrorists, not just smugglers.

The other charges are heavier still. Hernandez also faces conspiracy to build or finance a cross-border tunnel (up to 20 years), conspiracy to use the tunnel to import drugs (up to life) and conspiracy to import controlled substances (up to life), according to DOJ. Like every defendant, he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

What agents found under 'Buy 4 Less'

The tunnel itself came to light on May 29. According to the federal complaint described in DOJ's June 1 release, agents with the Homeland Security Investigations Tunnel Task Force had watched a supposed retail store called "Buy 4 Less," near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, since December 2025. Hardly any customers came and went. The store's "employees" kept hauling suitcases in and out, and some carried them on foot straight across the border into Mexico. They looked empty, so agents held off.

Then, on May 29, agents watched three deep freezers get moved from a van onto a truck at a mechanic shop and filled with packages. San Diego County sheriff's deputies stopped that truck, a second truck that left the store and a van. Drug dogs alerted on all three. Inside were 851 packages holding about 1,029.6 kilograms of cocaine, roughly 2,270 pounds, which DOJ valued at more than $45 million.

With search warrants in hand, agents found the tunnel's exit hidden under the floor of a storage room, opened by a hydraulic lift. It drops about 55 feet, then runs about 1,064 feet to the border and roughly another 800 feet into Mexico, with reinforced walls, rails, ventilation and electricity.

Two men named Hernandez

One detail trips up anyone reading the case files. The June complaint describes a store "employee" named Hernandez who agents saw at Buy 4 Less starting in January 2026. That is Gregorio Epifanio Hernandez Lopez, 29, of San Diego, one of four men charged in June. The alleged engineer, Luis Manuel Hernandez Victoria, is a different man. DOJ calls him the seventh person charged in connection with the tunnel.

According to public reports cited by DOJ, Mexican authorities arrested Hernandez Victoria in Jalisco on Oct. 15 and seized weapons and narcotics. The release does not say whether he is in U.S. custody yet, so how and when he lands in a San Diego courtroom is still an open question.

The bigger picture

Tunnels are the cartels' long game. DOJ counts 99 underground passages discovered in the Southern District of California since 1993, 28 of them sophisticated like this one. Before Buy 4 Less, the last operational tunnel found there was in 2022.

"For these defendants, it wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel. It was lights and sirens," Gordon said when the tunnel was announced in June. HSI San Diego's Kevin Murphy said in Thursday's release that agents "will continue to bring the cartel leaders and architects of cross-border smuggling tunnels like Hernandez to justice."

The case runs through the Homeland Security Task Force, the cartel-hunting team Trump created by executive order on his first day back. Its targets now include the people who design the routes, not just the ones who carry the bags.

What happens next

The investigation is ongoing, DOJ says, which means more names could follow. The four men charged in June face drug charges in the same court. And every engineer working for a designated cartel now has to reckon with a simple fact: building its tunnels can bring a terrorism charge.