Mexican drug cartel drones entered US airspace but were countered by American forces, US officials said Wednesday, explaining the brief but mysterious closure of El Paso airport in Texas.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said late Tuesday the airspace over the Texas metropolis would be shut to all aircraft for 10 days, citing unspecified national “security reasons,” only to lift the closure after less than 24 hours.
The report of a drone breach comes some five months into a US military campaign targeting alleged drug-smuggling boats, and could provide a pretext for President Donald Trump to follow through on his threats to expand the strikes to land.
Trump has specifically threatened to attack cartels inside Mexico.
The FAA and the Defense Department “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on X, adding: “The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region.”
A US administration official meanwhile said the breach was by “Mexican cartel drones,” and that US forces “took action to disable the drones,” without specifying how they did so.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told a news conference her government had “no information” on drones at the border and is investigating the airspace closure.
The Pentagon referred questions on the closure to the FAA, which said when it announced the closure that “no pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas” covered by the restrictions and warned of potentially “deadly force” if aircraft were deemed a threat.
However, it updated its guidance on Wednesday morning, saying on X: “The temporary closure of airspace over El Paso has been lifted.”
“There is no threat to commercial aviation. All flights will resume as normal.”
The FAA’s post came shortly after the local representative in Congress, Veronica Escobar, said there was no immediate threat to the community.
– War against ‘narco-terrorists’ –
“From what my office and I have been able to gather overnight and early this morning there is no immediate threat to the community or surrounding areas,” she wrote on X.
El Paso has a population of about 700,000 and is one of the 25 largest cities in the United States. Almost 3.5 million passengers passed through the airport between January and November 2025, according to data on its website.
Trump’s administration insists it is effectively at war with alleged “narco-terrorists,” carrying out strikes on alleged traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, while the US president has repeatedly said he plans to expand the strikes to land.
Sheinbaum opposes US military intervention in Mexico but has so far managed to negotiate a fine diplomatic line with Trump.
She has stepped up the extradition of cartel leaders to the United States and reinforced border cooperation amid tariff threats from Trump, for whom curbing illegal migration from Mexico was a key election promise.
The United States began carrying out strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in September, a campaign that has killed at least 130 people and destroyed dozens of vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
US officials have not provided definitive evidence that the vessels are involved in drug trafficking, prompting heated debate about the legality of the operations, which experts say amount to extrajudicial killings.
Trump also ordered a shocking special forces raid in Caracas at the beginning of January to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, whom Washington accused of leading a drug cartel.
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