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Brazen drug runners were hoping to get away with smuggling right under the noses of Mexican authorities by digging a narcotunnel from a house directly across the road from a military police station.

Security forces found the tunnel - which was still under construction - by chance while searching for a kidnapping victim in the border town of Tijuana.

Mexico's Attorney General's Office obtained a search warrant last Friday for the residence while looking for the missing individual.

National Guard troops had been unable to enter the premises because its gates were locked. The house is across the street from a National Guard station, and just a few hundred feet up the road from the Otay Mesa Land Port of Entry with the US.

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Sources told Mexican newspaper La Jornada that the criminal organization intended to connect the underground passageway to another one which had been built and located by authorities almost a decade ago.

Authorities say the tunnel was built 13 feet below the street surface and extended 656 feet. However, it fell short of reaching the southern United States city of San Diego.

The subterranean passage was equipped with rails which allowed a drilling machine to remove earth and gravel. The tunnel also featured a lighting and ventilation system. 

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Area residents told Telemundo that they never heard any noise emanating from the two-story home that is located on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Street, an avenue trucks transit through every day before crossing the Otay Mesa Port of Entry.

'No one knew what there was, no, everything was quiet,' Miriam Carmen said. 'It was a homelike house, nothing more.' 

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration's 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexican drug trafficking organizations are considered 'the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States.'

The DEA report indicated that aside from employing 'commercial and passenger vehicles' to ship massive quantities of narcotics to the U.S., tunnels also play an intricate role in ferrying drugs.

'These cross-border tunnels originate in Mexico and lead into safe houses on the U.S. side of the border,' the DEA said. 

DEA data shows that there are as many as 13,000 underground passageways in Mexico.