From The Gaza Strip To The U.S. Border With Mexico – A Growing Strategic Threat From Terrorist Use Of Tunnels

Memri

05-02-2025

Since October 7, 2023, the issue of terrorist use of tunnels has been front and center for those involved in strategic planning and military preparedness. While Western officials responsible for border security should be concerned about the tunnels that Hamas has used in its warfare and that Hizbullah has built over the past two decades along Israel's northern border, the fact that every major terrorist group in the world has been gaining experience and training in the use of tunnels in recent years should be a cause for alarm across the West.
Over the past two years, The Middle East Media Research Institute's (MEMRI) Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM), has been examining terrorist groups' tunnel warfare efforts. The findings of the research will be published in an upcoming study, "A Review of the Use of Tunnels by Hamas, Hizbullah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Houthis, and Other Jihadi Groups and Ramifications for U.S. National Security," set for publication this week.
Drawing on documentation of a decade of terrorist organizations' activities, including never-before-seen releases of terrorist activity inside tunnels, the study examines how jihadi terrorist groups around the world, including: the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Hurras Al-Din, Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), Hizbullah, the Houthis, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Syria-based jihadi groups, have used tunnels.
The use of tunnels has included military exercises, communications, and dissemination of data and intelligence; training, transportation and logistics; resupply, storage, and smuggling; weapons manufacturing; infiltration, exfiltration, and ambushes; maneuvering, attacking, and capturing enemies and for cover and concealment of fighters; firing mortars and artillery; and emplacing and deploying multiple launch rocket systems.
The study reveals further details not widely known – for instance, how, under Egypt's brief Muslim Brotherhood rule, the organization helped Hamas plan and develop its tunnel system. Muslim Brotherhood leader Tareq Suwaidan, who likes to gossip about jihadi insider information, disclosed in a February 2024 lecture: "You know, if you are following the news, that there are hundreds of kilometers [in Gaza].... How were they able to dig these tunnels? They happened in one year, when Mohamed Morsi was ruling [Egypt]. He gave them the equipment to do that. So, when we have sincere leaders, then you see the true support for Palestine and the true resistance."
It also includes extensive information about Hizbullah, long known for its extensive network of massive tunnels – that, like Hamas, it aims to use to attack and invade Israel. It is no secret that Hizbullah has shared its tunnel knowhow with Hamas, and trained Hamas in tunnel construction. Destroying these tunnels, many of them built under Lebanese towns, in southern Lebanon is now one of Israel's major strategic goals there.
The October 7 attack, which will go down as one of the most devasting intelligence failures in history, and Hamas's well-known and extensive use of tunnels are forcing the U.S. and the West to redouble their efforts on studying tunnel warfare. The construction of at least 300 miles of tunnels under the noses of Israeli and even U.S. intelligence was a stunning achievement for Hamas and Iran's Axis of Resistance and continues to serve as inspiration for other terrorist organizations.
The U.S. government has long been concerned about terrorist use of tunnels. In recent years, the Department of Defense has, via the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has been examining the potential offensive and defensive use of tunnels and investing in new technologies. This is also a direct threat to U.S. national and homeland security, not only because of threats to U.S. embassies, military bases, and other obvious targets, but because of tunnels originating in Mexico and Canada. Additionally, Israel's ongoing difficulties in identifying and taking control of Hamas tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip – due primarily to Hamas's use of human shields – give military strategists much to plan for, now and into the future.
While the U.S.-Mexico border was one of the top issues in the 2024 presidential election, there has been little discussion of the national security threat posed by tunnels that are known to exist there. Just a few weeks ago, on January 10, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported on a sophisticated smuggling tunnel, described as "historic" and measuring six feet tall and four feet wide – comparable to Hamas tunnels in Gaza – from Mexico to the U.S. that opened up into the public storm drain system in El Paso, Texas. Finally, on January 27, Mexican authorities began filling in the underground tunnel.
The threat posed by the tunnels in Mexico is exemplified by the Hamas October 7 attack. Tunnels have been a concern vis-à-vis the security of the U.S.-Mexico border for decades. Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Chris Landau said on September 13, 2024: "Hamas folks have this tunnel technology and the cartels in Mexico want to take advantage of that kind of technology... This has got to be the Number One national security interest of the United States – to make sure our own borders are secure."
Tunnels on the U.S.-Mexico border have been linked to other designated terrorist organizations. The notorious Los Zetas drug trafficking organization, which smuggles its goods into the U.S. via manmade tunnel systems along the Mexico-U.S. border, has reportedly partnered with Hizbullah.
Other terror elements are constantly seeking ways to enter the U.S. This is shown by a September 2023 chat on the encrypted server Rocket.Chat operated by ISIS supporters, where two users discussed ways to enter Mexico and Canada. A user asked, in Arabic and English, whether anyone was going to either country and added that he had seen videos showing Iraqi and Yemeni men illegally crossing from Ecuador into Mexico.
Arab-American YouTuber Jad Manon posted a video in Arabic on August 1, 2024 on immigration into the U.S. from Mexico that highlighted the process his viewers must go through in order to cross into the U.S. either legally or illegally as well as showing on the ground the network there in place to assist each other including through a local established mosque. He said: "There are also people who cross through tunnels they dig underground, or they can saw [through a beam] and go under it, like that Mexican guy showed us, or they climb the wall and go to the other side, to America, and especially to San Diego."
One of the most recent incidents that should alarm the U.S. military is a December 16, 2024 report by Qatar's Al-Jazeera Network focused on a tunnel abandoned by Iran-backed militias in Deir Al-Zour in eastern Syria. The 15-meter tunnel, under Iranian militia and Russian Wagner operations headquarters, was where military operations were planned, including some that had been carried out against U.S. forces. The Al-Jazeera correspondent zoomed in on documents in Farsi and on a map highlighting the U.S. military base at the nearby Conoco gas field and other U.S. sites in eastern Syria, which could very well have been targeted in an attack using tunnels.
Another tunnel network was reported on January 24 by the independent Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR); the report provided video and details on a network of tunnels in "strategic areas" constructed and used by Iran-backed militias in Deir Al-Zour, Syria recently in use.
Those involved in counterterrorism, homeland security, and active military service must all continue to study and prepare for how terrorist organizations have been using tunnels and focus on how to detect, map out, fight in them, deal with hostages taken inside of them, and ultimately how to destroy them. History teaches that terrorists learn from successful tactics other groups have used and adopt the same strategies that have been proven successful.
* Steven Stalinsky, Ph.D., is Executive Director of The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and lead author of "A Review of the Use of Tunnels by Hamas, Hizbullah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Houthis, and Other Jihadi Groups and Ramifications for U.S. National Security."