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Truck Driver Gets 21-Year Sentence For Drug Smuggling

Photo by Ruxandra Guidi

ICE agents outside one of the Otay Mesa warehouses where underground smuggling tunnels were found in November, 2010.

SAN DIEGO -- Twenty-nine year-old Carlos Enrique Cunningham Jr. from Oceanside has pleaded guilty to driving truckloads of marijuana from an Otay Mesa warehouse, connected by tunnel to Tijuana, for distribution in Southern California.

"This sentence that the judge gave is an extremely high sentence, and that is not only because of the vast quantity of marijuana that was seized," said Gretchen von Helms, Cunningham's defense attorney who negotiated the plea agreement. "His sentence was also because there was additional marijuana found at these warehouses."

Cunningham pleaded guilty to

Ruxandra Guidi was a KPCC reporter for the Fronteras Desk from 2010 to 2013.