Juarez drug traffickers use drones to drop drugs in El Paso

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Federal officials in El Paso confirmed a Mexican police chief’s report that members of organized crime groups are using drones to drop drugs across the El Paso border.

“In the area of ​​the (Big Red X) monument, they have used drones to transfer packages of drugs and deliver them to the other side,” Chihuahua Public Security Director Gilberto Loya told reporters on Thursday.

The site, also known as Plaza de la Mexicanidad, is located about 100 yards south of the Rio Grande and the U.S. border wall. The monument itself is located on the grounds of the Juarez Fair and has long been used as a geographic landmark for migrants seeking to turn themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol.

Border Report contacted several 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 the type or quantity of drugs encountered. The Juarez cartels have specialized in the sale and trafficking of methamphetamine, particularly crystal meth, or “ice,” in recent years.

Mexican cartels are increasingly using drones, not only to deliver drugs but also to monitor the Mexican police and military. In southern Mexico, they want to attack their rivals with homemade bombs.

Loya said Thursday that his agents had downed several cartel drones in the mountainous areas of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico. The encounters were mostly in the southern part of the state, which borders Mexico’s “Golden Triangle” of drug production. It is near the intersection of the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.

“We have 15 countermeasures against drones. Some force the drone to return, some cut the signal completely, causing it to fall to the ground, and some simply follow the drone to its base,” the police chief said.

The state police are also using their own drones to monitor mass events, such as the upcoming “Grito” Independence Day celebration. That kind of crowd control is paramount for a city that still relies to some extent on the economic activity of foreign visitors.

The U.S. border wall separates Sunland Park, New Mexico, from the Anapra neighborhood of Juarez, Mexico.

Returning to organized crime groups, Loya said these gangs also use drones to monitor police activity on both sides of the border wall in the northwestern Juarez-Sunland Park, New Mexico, migrant smuggling route.

The area known as Anapra is a staging area for illegal crossings into the desert between Sunland Park and Santa Teresa, New Mexico. It has also become a graveyard for many migrants who have been abandoned by smugglers or who have gotten lost and succumbed to the heat. The latest report from the U.S. Border Patrol shows 171 migrant deaths in the El Paso Sector since Oct. 1.

“They are using the drones as ‘guides’ to bring people in caravans to the United States,” Loya said.

Federal officials in El Paso said they could not confirm that Mexican drones were crossing the border and ferrying undocumented migrants through the New Mexico desert. However, an American freelance journalist previously told KTSM that he had found a “cartel drone” in the desert near Sunland Park.

But one official said the cartel’s countersurveillance is blatant and blatant in the Anapra area. Smugglers or cartel guards sometimes stand on the Mexican side just feet away from vigilant Border Patrol agents on the U.S. side.

According to Loya, the Chihuahua state police are increasingly working with the Mexican army to expand the hunt for drone cartels.