Cartels using drones to smuggle drugs across border, former DEA official warns
Former DEA Chief of Operations Ray Donovan joins 'America's Newsroom' to discuss Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's warning that cartels are utilizing drones along the southern border.
The Mexican army has confirmed that drug cartel-operated bomb-dropping drones have killed soldiers in the western state of Michoacan.
Defense Secretary Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval did not provide exact figures on the number of casualties suffered in the attacks, according to the Associated Press.
Sandoval stated on Friday that attacks targeted patrol units and included over 260 drone-bomb incidents in 2023 alone.
"Our personnel have suffered wounds, and some of our troops have even died" in the attacks, Sandoval said.
A unit of the Mexican Army patrols the streets of Tulum, Quintana Roo state, Mexico on January 31, 2023. (David Gannon/AFP via Getty Images)
The Jalisco cartel, known for equipping drones with metal bomb casings, has turned the region into a warzone with IEDs, trenches, and armored vehicles.
Sandoval told the AP that the army continues to encounter far more road-side bombs than drone-dropped ones.
MEXICAN CARTELS USE US BORDER TO ARM THEMSELVES WITH 'MILITARY-GRADE' WEAPONS: DOCS
Members of the self-defense group Pueblos Unidos carry out guard duties in protection of avocado plantations, whipped by drug cartels that dominate the area, in Ario de Rosales, state of Michoacan, Mexico, on July 8, 2021. (Photo by Enrique Castro/AFP via Getty Images)
According to officials, the only other reported cartel bomb attacks took place back in August 2023.
The defense department told the AP during that time, a total of 42 soldiers, police and suspects were wounded by IEDs in the first seven and a half months of 2023, up from 16 in all of 2022.
The Mexican army is now adding anti-drone systems to combat these threats.
'MOST RUTHLESS' MEXICAN CARTELS OPERATE IN ALL 50 STATES, BRING TURF WARS TO US: DEA
Mexican army soldiers prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, March 6, 2023. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the four Americans were going to buy medicine and were caught in the crossfire between two armed groups after they had entered Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, on Friday. (AP Photo)
Mexico’s Navy also acknowledged on Friday that two military helicopter crew members died earlier this year when their chopper went down in the Pacific Ocean while chasing cocaine-smuggling boats.
Officials told the AP that the U.S. Navy had agreed to help in recovering the sunken helicopter and the crew members’ remains.
The Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels have also flooded major U.S. cities with meth and fentanyl and use violence to protect their turf, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a May report.
"The deadly reach of the Mexican Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels into U.S. communities is extended by the wholesale-level traffickers and street dealers bringing the cartels’ drugs to market, sometimes creating their own deadly drug mixtures," the DEA report says. "Together, the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have caused the worst drug crisis in U.S. history."
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In late April, 12 traffickers tied to the Jalisco cartel were sentenced to 4.5 to 40 years in federal prison after they were busted in Del Rio, Texas, in 2021 for coordinating a shipment of nearly 200 kilograms of liquid methamphetamine worth $9.9 million.
Last week, during an interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters on "Jesse Watters Primetime, former President Trump said strikes against Mexican drug cartels are "absolutely" still on the table as fentanyl and overdose deaths continue to plague the United States.
Fox News Digital's Chris Eberhart and Ashley Carnahan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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