Surveillance cameras placed on palm trees by drug cartel ‘falcons’ in town on Arizona border, Mexican authorities say

Mexican authorities said they have detected and seized 24 drug cartel surveillance cameras attached to telephone poles, lampposts and even palm trees in the border city of San Luis Rio Colorado.

The city on the Arizona border has suffered years of violence between drug cartels battling for control of the border crossing where they can smuggle drugs.

Prosecutors in the northern state of Sonora said Friday that the cameras were placed there by “falcons,” the name often used in Mexico for drug cartel lookouts that want to monitor the movements of soldiers and police.

Army troops removed the devices and photos posted on social media by prosecutors suggested they were ordinary porch-style cameras wrapped in duct tape. They were found in three different neighborhoods, located “on utility poles, public lights, telephones and even in palm trees,” prosecutors said.

Located across from Yuma, Arizona, San Luis Rio Colorado is best known as a border town where Americans can go for cheap prescriptions and dental work. But the country is increasingly affected by violence from drug cartels.

It is not the first border city where cartels have installed their own surveillance networks.

In 2015, a drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas used at least 39 surveillance cameras to monitor the comings and goings of authorities in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

The cameras were powered by electrical lines above city streets and accessed the Internet via telephone cables running along the same poles, including modems, and could operate wirelessly or over the lines of commercial providers.

Several cameras focused on an army base, while others captured movements outside a naval post, offices of the attorney general and state police, as well as shopping centers, major thoroughfares and some neighborhoods.

During 2015, authorities also discovered 55 radio communications antennas between the nearby border towns of Matamoros and Miguel Aleman.

Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department said it has sanctioned two Mexican companies — an ice cream chain and a local pharmacy — for allegedly using proceeds from fentanyl trafficking to finance their activities linked to the Sinaloa cartel.

The sanctions were announced as rival cartel factions found themselves in a situation deadly conflict with each other and with the authorities after the surprising arrest on American soil of the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in late July, which is believed to have sparked an internal power struggle within the group.