EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Federal officials in El Paso confirmed a Mexican police chief’s report that members of organized criminal groups are using drones to drop off drugs across the border into El Paso.
“In the area of the (Big Red X) monument, they have been using drones to cross packages of drugs and drop them off on the other side,” Chihuahua Public Safety Director Gilberto Loya told reporters on Thursday.
The site also known as Plaza de la Mexicanidad is about 100 yards south of the Rio Grande and the U.S. border wall. The monument itself is on the grounds of the Juarez Fair and has long been used as a geographical landmark for migrants seeking to turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Border Report reached out to some U.S. law enforcement agencies and a federal official confirmed drug-drone encounters in South-Central El Paso. The official could not immediately quantify the number of drones or type or amount of drugs encountered. Juarez cartels in the past couple of years have specialized in the sale and trafficking of methamphetamine, particularly crystal meth or “ice.”
Mexican cartels have stepped up their use of drones not only to deliver drugs, but also to conduct surveillance on police and the Mexican army, and in southern Mexico to attack rivals with homemade bombs.
Loya on Thursday said his officers have downed several cartel drones in the mountain areas of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico. The encounters mostly took place in the southern portion of the state that abuts Mexico’s “Golden Triangle” of drug production. It’s near the juncture of the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.
“We have 15 countermeasure devices against drones. Some force the drone to turn back, some cut off its signal entirely, so it falls to the ground, and some just track the drone to its base,” the police chief said.
The state police also uses its own drones to monitor mass events, such as the upcoming “Grito” Independence Day celebration. That type of crowd control is paramount for a city that still depends to some degree on the economic activity of foreign visitors.
The U.S. border wall separates Sunland Park, New Mexico, from the Anapra neighborhood of Juarez, Mexico.
Going back to the organized criminal groups, Loya said those gangs also use drones to monitor police activity on both sides of the border wall in the northwest Juarez-Sunland Park, New Mexico, migrant smuggling corridor.
The area known as Anapra is a staging point for illegal crossings into the desert between Sunland Park and Santa Teresa, New Mexico. It has also become a graveyard for many migrants left behind by smugglers or who get lost and succumb to the heat. The latest report from the U.S. Border Patrol shows 171 migrant fatalities in the El Paso Sector since Oct. 1.
“They use the drones as ‘guides’ to take people in caravan to cross into the United States,” Loya said.
Federal officials in El Paso said they could not confirm that Mexican drones are crossing the border and guiding undocumented migrants through the New Mexico desert. One American freelance journalist, however, previously reported to KTSM finding a “cartel drone” in the desert near Sunland Park.
But one official said the cartel counter-surveillance is evident — and brazen — in the Anapra area, with smugglers or cartel lookouts sometimes standing on the Mexican side just a few feet away from vigilant Border Patrol agents on the U.S. side.
Loya said Chihuahua state police are increasingly working with the Mexican army to expand efforts to hunt down cartel drones.
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