Texas sheriff tells Congress nearly 2,000 Mexican drug cartel drones are swarming US skies
Anna Giaritelli
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AUSTIN, Texas — A county sheriff plans to sound the alarm before Congress about mass incursions of unidentified flying objects illegally entering U.S. airspace from Mexico, piloted by cartels and used to spy on federal agents working near the international border.
Sheriff Urbino “Benny” Martinez of Brooks County will tell Democrats and Republicans during the House GOP’s first hearing on the Texas border on Wednesday evening that state and local police have observed nearly 2,000 drones flying overhead in three Texas counties over the past month.
The pilots are members of criminal organizations in Mexico that smuggle people and drugs into the United States and use the unmanned aerial vehicles to see where police are stationed and what areas are open.
“In the past 31 days of 2023, there have been 1,937 Mexican Cartel drone’s incursions in three South Texas border counties,” according to a preview of Martinez’s remarks as a witness in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s joint subcommittee hearing in Weslaco, Texas.
ARRESTS OF CHINESE IMMIGRANTS ILLEGALLY CROSSING U.S.-MEXICO BORDER JUMPS 1,230% IN JANUARY
Martinez’s testimony comes as the U.S. government works to understand why a large Chinese balloon had been flying through U.S. airspace earlier this month.
Last week, the U.S. shot down an unidentified flying object over Alaska, sparking more concern among the public over the sudden string of incidents.
The House committee hearing is the first that Republicans have promised to hold outside Washington in an attempt to force Democrats to see the situation on the border, where record-high illegal immigrant apprehensions over the past two years have had serious ramifications for border residents.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) promised after the November election last year to make lawmakers “come down to the border to tour.”
“We will hold our hearings at the border so the Democrats can no longer hide from the crisis they created,” McCarthy said during a previous press conference in El Paso, Texas.
Officials from a healthcare organization, the Border Patrol union, and a Texas civil rights organization will join Martinez as witnesses at the hearing Wednesday.
Despite the many drones, fighting back is difficult for police since any item falling out of the sky, especially one with spinning blades, can pose a threat to the public. Shooting the drones down with a gun has not been an option.
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Taking drones out of the sky is a new and evolving issue for police. Handheld systems that look like bullpup rifles can send an invisible electronic signal to the drone with instructions that override what the pilot is telling the drone to do. These tools can also jam local cellphone towers to halt all other activity in order to get that electronic communication to the drone instantly.
Other devices create an invisible blanket over an area that prohibits drones from flying into them. Both types of counterdrone measures are less than a decade old and are rarely used by federal, state, and local law enforcement due to legal constraints and cost.