Members of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s cabinet woke up Wednesday morning to the news that US aviation officials had closed the airspace over El Paso, the Texas city across from the border metropolis of Ciudad Juárez.
Just weeks after the closure of airspace over Venezuela paved the way for the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the move raised alarm among Cabinet members tasked with maintaining national security and raised fears of a possible incursion by U.S. forces, according to people familiar with the conversations. They spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose high-level discussions.
Officials suspected that El Paso’s airspace had been closed in preparation for a unilateral raid against a drug lord in the state of Chihuahua, just across the border in Mexico. US officials described the shutdown as a matter of national security and said it would last 10 days.
Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s security minister, called senior U.S. officials Wednesday morning and was told the shutdown was unrelated to a raid in Mexico, according to an official familiar with the conversations..
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He briefed Security Cabinet officials at a daily morning briefing by Sheinbaum, which included the defense and navy secretaries, about his call with US officials.
A few hours later, the US Federal Aviation Administration reopened El Paso airspace. Transport Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X that “the threat has been neutralized”.
Officially, US officials said a drone operated by a cartel violated US airspace and was neutralized by a powerful anti-drone laser. A US government source who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters said the object was not a drone but a Mylar party balloon.
Over the past year, President Trump has threatened to send US special forces after Mexican drug cartel bosses. Trump said he had repeatedly asked Sheinbaum to allow the US military to operate in Mexico, an offer he rejected as unacceptable and a violation of Mexican sovereignty.
For Mexican officials, this week’s shutdown was particularly stunning — and troubling — because it came just weeks after U.S. special forces captured Maduro in Caracas on Jan. 3.
Mexican officials watched with alarm as the US stepped up pressure on Maduro in the weeks before his arrest, gathering warships off the coast of Venezuela before seizing him and his wife and bringing them to New York to face drug-trafficking charges in US federal court.
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This week, Mexican officials believed the U.S. was preparing such a strike in Mexico, people familiar with the conversations said.
“The concern was that there was a target they wanted on the Juárez side,” said a person familiar with the discussions.
Meanwhile, Sheinbaum has steadily increased security cooperation with the US in an effort to appease Trump and prevent unilateral US action in Mexico. In an unprecedented move, the Sheinbaum administration circumvented Mexican extradition law and handed over nearly 100 jailed drug lords to US authorities over the past year.
But those prisoner transfers have not eased tensions at the US-Mexico border, where cartel drones regularly fly into US airspace, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Reports of the airspace closure spread quickly in El Paso Wednesday morning.
“I thought he was moving a high-value target in or out of the area,” El Paso resident Narada Johnson said.
“This unnecessary decision has caused chaos and confusion in the El Paso community,” Mayor Renard Johnson said at a news conference after the ban was lifted. “This should never have happened.”
The shutdown came as the Department of Homeland Security prepared to fire a powerful counter-drone laser. The use of the weapon was confirmed by The Times. The agency targeted what was believed to be a cartel-controlled “dark drone” that does not emit a radio signal or transmit its identification, according to a person familiar with the operation who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters.
In recent months, the US government has stepped up counter-drone operations at the southern border. Criminal groups often use drones to traffic fentanyl and to monitor US law enforcement operations, Steven Willoughby, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-drone program, told a congressional hearing last July.
Willoughby said that in 2023 law enforcement seized one such drone carrying 3.6 kilograms of fentanyl. Willoughby said the Department of Homeland Security counted about 27,000 drones flying within 500 yards (nearly 550 meters) of the US border in the last half of 2024 alone.
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At Wednesday’s daily news conference, Sheinbaum appeared to dismiss the presence of cartel-operated drones in the border region.
“There is no information related to the use of drones at the border,” Sheinbaum said.
However, the cartel’s drone raids were high on the agenda of the most recent bilateral security meeting in Mexico City late last year, according to people familiar with the discussions. At the meeting, US officials stressed the need for greater coordination to stop drone incursions into US airspace. The Mexican government said it would create a task force on the issue.
Fisher is a special correspondent. Independent journalist Alyda Muela in El Paso contributed to this report. This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborativea bilingual nonprofit newsroom covering stories from Mexico and the US-Mexico border.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.