TPR Today<\/a>, Texas Public Radio\u2019s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.<\/p>\nMexico\u2019s newest anti-drone operation on the Tijuana-San Diego border isn\u2019t the first of its kind. It\u2019s modeled directly on a binational exercise conducted five months ago along the Texas border, between Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez and El Paso.<\/p>\n
That first operation ran from March 17 to 31, according to Mexico\u2019s Defense Ministry (SEDENA), and established the basic template now being applied in Baja California: Mexican and U.S. forces detecting and disabling drones used by smugglers, each side operating strictly within its own territory under a \u201cmirror operations\u201d framework tied to the bilateral Grupo Bilateral de Implementaci\u00f3n M\u00e9xico-Estados Unidos.<\/p>\n
Unlike the current Tijuana-San Diego deployment, where SEDENA has disclosed the size of the force, 800 troops, and the precise area covered, a five-kilometer stretch near Mesa de Otay, the ministry never released comparable details for the El Paso-Ju\u00e1rez pilot: no troop numbers, no equipment specifics, no results. That earlier operation appears to have functioned largely as a proof of concept, run quietly and evaluated before Mexico scaled the model to a second, larger border corridor.<\/p>\n
The Texas test case sits within a broader escalation in drone activity along the border. Mexican officials maintain roughly 165 anti-drone units nationwide, according to General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo and SEDNEA. One recent analysis found about 670 incidents involving armed drones since 2018, with more than 72% occurring between January 2025 and August 2026 alone, a sharp recent acceleration tied largely to cartel infighting in states like Sinaloa and Michoac\u00e1n.<\/p>\n
Texas remains central to the U.S. side of the response as well. U.S. Northern Command\u2019s Joint Task Force-Southern Border has neutralized more than 300 cartel-linked drones so far this year, with reports attributed to Department of War officials putting roughly 100 of those in August alone. Since Aug. 24, U.S. forces have gone further on Texas soil specifically, using a high-energy laser system near the Rio Grande Valley to shoot down drones, a capability Mexico\u2019s defense secretary has said the country is not yet pursuing for its own side of the border.<\/p>\n
SEDENA has not said whether the Tijuana-San Diego operation, running through Sept. 21, has intercepted any drones so far, or when results from the corridor \u2014 or a comparison against the earlier El Paso pilot \u2014 might be made public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A member of the Texas National Guard operates machinery while replacing razor wire fence near the U.S.-Mexico border…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1477,67310,4018,138,140,139,1724,223,2053,12733],"class_list":["post-435829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-border","tag-cartels","tag-drones","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-immigration","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-tpr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435829","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=435829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789412536_780_.webp\")
A member of the Texas National Guard operates machinery while replacing razor wire fence near the U.S.-Mexico border wall, as tensions rise over the use of drones by suspected criminal groups, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, February 12, 2026. (Jose Luis Gonzalez | Reuters)<\/p>\n