story was originally published<\/a> by our content partners at The Texas Tribune.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Federal Aviation Administration reopened airspace over El Paso and part of southern New Mexico on Wednesday morning after shutting it down for a few hours overnight amid an announcement there would be no flights for 10 days. The White House now says the unusual closure was triggered by Mexican cartel drones breaching U.S. airspace \u2014 contradicting an industry source who said it was because of an impasse with the Department of Defense over the use of unmanned military aircraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe temporary closure of airspace over El Paso has been lifted. There is no threat to commercial aviation. All flights will resume as normal,\u201d the FAA shared on X.<\/p>\n
An industry official, who had been briefed on the matter by the FAA in a morning call and asked not to be identified, told the Tribune that the Defense Department has been operating unmanned aircraft, or drones, against drug cartel operations from a base near El Paso\u2019s airport without sharing information with the FAA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has to do with the FAA\u2019s inability to predict where [unmanned aircraft systems] might be flying,\u201d the official told the Tribune. \u201cThey have been operating outside the normal flight paths.\u201d<\/p>\n
But a Trump official on Wednesday said the closure occurred because Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace. The Department of War took action to disable the drones, the official said, and both the FAA and the military have now determined there is no threat to commercial travel.<\/p>\n
The unexplained notices late Tuesday closed airspace over El Paso and a large patch of southern New Mexico west of Santa Teresa for 10 days. El Paso International Airport was set to be closed to all flights, the city had said. The orders closed off all air travel in the affected area, which could cause massive disruption in the nation\u2019s 23rd-largest city.<\/p>\n
Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said her office has been told there\u2019s no imminent threat to El Paso.<\/p>\n
The Tribune was unable to immediately reach Fort Bliss officials for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The FAA later reopened airspace on Wednesday morning, just hours after the notice shutting it down was issued.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":{"0":"post-161376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-el-paso","9":"tag-el-paso-headlines","10":"tag-el-paso-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}