Posted on 04/14/2022 6:04:11 PM PDT by bitt
Mexican drug cartels have conducted more than 9,000 drone flights into U.S. airspace in the last year to surveil American law enforcement and security operations in the southern border region, a senior Homeland Security official told Judicial Watch this week. The drones are observing federal, state, county, and city agencies near the Mexican border, including the U.S. Border Patrol, Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas National Guard, county sheriffs and local police. The Border Patrol, which operates under Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has captured about a dozen of the drones, and accessed the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ (UAVs) guidance and memory systems to gain intelligence information, according to a high-level official at the agency.
Judicial Watch learned about the Mexican cartel drone incursions during a recent visit to the southern border and specifically while interviewing federal officials at the CBP Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas. Judicial Watch is further investigating the matter and has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with CBP, the 60,000-member agency charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S., for all records regarding the use of drones by criminal organizations operating along the U.S.-Mexico border for the purpose of surveilling U.S. law enforcement officials or otherwise facilitating illegal activity. The federal public-record request includes, but is not limited to, all information depicting the known or estimated number of instances of the use of such technology, as well as all reports, intelligence assessments, analyses, or similar records related to their use.
Federal officials on the ground tell Judicial Watch that the cartels use the UAV surveillance flights to facilitate human smuggling and drug trafficking. Specifically, they help identify gaps in border coverage and assist the cartels in overwhelming certain areas to create a diversion for moving sensitive or high value loads through alternate border locations. The data analyzed from the confiscated drones has also provided U.S. authorities with other law-enforcement sensitive information that cannot be made public, government sources said, adding that drug cartels started using the devices a few years ago. Brandon Judd, the president of the union representing the nation’s 20,000 Border Patrol agents, told Judicial Watch the drones are also used to smuggle small amounts of drugs into the U.S. “They are dropping fentanyl,” Judd said this week. “They fly into certain locations, drop them to the ground and fentanyl is taken off of them and they take back off into Mexico.” The drones are not military grade, Judd confirmed, but rather “run of the mill” that can be purchased anywhere.
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The open border is bipartisan.
Republicans could have funded a secure border when Trump was in, but they refused.
Act of war, plain and simple.
AA-12’s would also work nicely.
It’s not just at the border. It’s near every military installation and port as well as every major city.
Where will we have a ‘no drone fly’ zone first ?
I bet if the govt paid a small bounty for every downed drone...
That should be carved in stone!
We need an Israeli “Iron Shield” all across our Southern border.
Automated.
With smaller versions of those air-to-air lasers.
And how many tens of thousands of drone flights did they have actually shipping narcotics into the USA?
‘ZACKLY!
US Border Patrol Agents need time busting clays to get prepared to cope with drones.
The cartels surely like to “Drone On”!
Time shoot them down and hit their launching sites, no matter where they are.
There, fixed it for you.
Damn. Should have brought their skeet shotguns.
South Korea uses towers with remotely controlled quad-.50s spaced to give overlapping fields of fire.
Idiots!
Killl the cartel leaders and this shtuff will STOP!
Nice!
“Republicans could have funded a secure border when Trump was in, but they refused”
During the George W Bush administration Congress voted to build a physical wall on the southern border. The Bush administration, chose to build a “virtual” wall instead, giving defense contractors a billion dollar boondoggle selling the government cameras and sensors which recorded movement but did nothing to restrict movement. The virtual wall was ineffective and soon became technologically obsolete. The Obama administration shut it down.
The Republicans twice had the opportunity to build a strong physical wall and the backing of a majority of the electorate to do so. Both times they chose not to protect the border.
Imagine if Bush had built a physical wall and Trump had repaired and improved it. Lost opportunities kill nations. Treachery from within also kills nations.
Every citizen on the border needs to be armed up and blasting these things out of the sky.
That would mean the loss of their cut if they did that.
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