U.S. Officials Describe Cartel Use of Commercial Drones at Southern Border

Officials at the Departments of Homeland Security and War are gravely concerned about the security of the nation’s skies along the land border. They have admitted that the airspace is incredibly easy to penetrate from Canada and Mexico. -Mexico border have already begun to push terrorist organizations and cartels into the air.

The shift comes as they seek to get around ground infrastructure such as walls, river barriers and sensors while smuggling money and guns into Mexico and drugs into the United States. “What happens when you shrink the battle space? S.

Customs and Border Protection’s acting executive director for countering unmanned aircraft systems within the defense capability group. Crane spoke during a discussion at the Border Security Expo in Arizona this week. Crane said it takes a long time to build a tunnel but does not take a long time to go to Walmart, buy a drone, and fly it.

Cartels have deployed fiber optics and GPS-enabled drones in recent years and have tweaked store-bought drones to outsmart detection systems or carry heavier payloads. “Stuff overseas, well, it’s now at our homeland,” Crane said. He added that he is seeing things that scare him and keep him up at night as it relates to the counter-UAS mission.

Steven Willoughby, acting director of the C-UAS program at DHS, explained that drones can be repurposed for virtually any illicit purpose. “You can use drones for whatever you dream up in your imagination, right? You can carry a payload.

You can do surveillance, counter-surveillance. You can have it fly and deliver, deliver munitions. You can carry narcotics, firearms. I mean, the ability to repurpose a drone to carry out some sort of illicit activity is boundless,” Willoughby said.

Drones are used to spy on federal law enforcement on patrol and scout out areas on the border that may be easier to move people or goods across, undetected. S. -Canada border is two and a half times as long as the southern border, making it more vulnerable to such tactics.

Brigadier General Matt Ross, director of the Joint Interagency Task Force 401 DOW, described how the threat now has tremendous access to the third dimension. “We fight wars in the two dimension until the airplane came around, and then we started realizing the Air Force can handle it all,” Ross said.

He added that the threat extends lines of operation and logistics because it is just battery power, which is extensive.

U.S. airspace is “not as controlled as everyone thinks,” according to Ross. Between 100 feet and about 1,000 feet inside the United States, airspace is pretty much unfettered access unless around an airport.

U.S. drones. Border Patrol agents at a station or CBP Office of Field Operations port of entry tactical operations center look at 12 different screens at any given time.

Crane said Border Patrol is buying drones in bulk to “flood the border” with the machines. The new DHS secretary is Markwayne Mullin, who saw and learned about the threats posed by enemy drones during a recent trip to the border and has knowledge of the drone problem from private briefings as a former senator.

Steven Willoughby wants to “normalize” unmanned aerial systems as tools accessible to all personnel across CBP, the Coast Guard, the Federal Protective Service, and other DHS agencies.

He said he would love to see a drone capacity for every Border Patrol agent alongside the shotgun in a truck. Federal police have only 20 to 30 seconds from seeing a drone on a screen to decide how to respond. Crane, Willoughby, and Ross addressed more than 100 attendees at their discussion at the Border Security Expo.