Two Border Patrol chiefs appeared before the House Oversight Committee and described the extraordinary challenges the agency is facing on the southern border. They said cartels are going to great lengths to avoid apprehension, that includes using drones and camouflage.
In Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, cartels are using drones to pinpoint agents’ locations, hoping it will help them smuggle drugs and people. According to the sector chief, the Rio Grande Valley had 10,000 drone incursions in a single year.
“We have made great progress in countering the threat of small unmanned platforms. However, the adversaries have 17 times the number of drones, twice the amount of flight hours and unlimited funding to grow their operations,” Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Gloria Chavez said.
The Tucson sector chief testified that his agents are encountering single adult men, not families. Many of those men have criminal histories. They wear camouflage, run and even fight agents to avoid apprehension.
“Many are previously deported felons who know they’re inadmissible to the United States, and many pose a serious threat to our communities,” Tucson Sector Chief John Modlin.
Chief Modlin said for an added fee, the immigrants are given cellphones to navigate through the desert and mountains. Other tactics include saturating an area with large groups to overwhelm agents. Cartels also recruit American high schoolers on social media to drive immigrants after they cross. It’s a very dangerous, sometimes deadly and illegal venture.
“No one crosses in the Tucson sector without going through the cartels,” Modlin said. “In the Tucson sector, everything south of the border is controlled by the cartels.”
As for the politics, Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., blamed the president for the increase in crossings.
“President Biden and his administration have created the worst border crisis in American history. The cartels are leveraging chaos at the border,” Rep. Comer said.
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Md., said Republicans have voted against bills that could have helped the situation and have not presented a solution.
“Our basic problem is a political one: legal channels of immigration have been choked off in the wake of congressional failure to act in bipartisan fashion on immigration policy,” Rep. Raskin said.
There was bipartisan support for stopping the flow of fentanyl, which was described as a matter of life and death.
