As cartels deploy sophisticated drones along the Texas-Mexico border, state lawmakers are examining whether local law enforcement has the authority and tools needed to stop them.
Testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Homeland and Border Security on Wednesday detailed drone use for surveillance, cross-border smuggling, and potential attacks on officers and critical infrastructure.
“Drone technology continues to evolve and has become increasingly accessible to both legitimate users and bad actors. Criminal organizations and hostile actors are using drones to conduct surveillance, transport contraband, and threaten critical infrastructure and public safety. Our goal is to evaluate whether current state laws and enforcement authorities are sufficient to address these emerging threats,” said State Sen. Phil King (R–Weatherford).
Drones are unmanned vehicles that are typically piloted remotely. The technology was once largely associated with hobbyists, however, ISIS began using them in 2014 for reconnaissance. By 2017, the technology was being widely used for attacks. The war in Ukraine has since dramatically accelerated the development and battlefield use of low-cost drones.
“In March of this year, more than 90 percent of Russian combat losses–roughly 34,000 troops in a month–were caused by drones. On one day in April, drones inflicted more than 1,000 of Russia’s 1,300 casualties,” said Dr. Michael McGee, a specialist in drone technology, during his testimony. “Ukraine built over 4 million drones last year and can now build 8 million a year at three to $400 a piece, and on the other side, Russia launched more than 8,000 Shahed-type drones in May of this year alone, about 260 a day. We are already at an industrial scale of production.”
According to McGee, Texas is already dealing with this threat as well. Cartels are utilizing drones to survey Customs and Border Protection surveillance positions and to smuggle narcotics and contraband into prisons and stash houses.
McGee also stated that Ukrainian counterintelligence departments opened an investigation into Latin Americans who embedded themselves in the Foreign Legion to learn how to pilot drones effectively.
He added that drones range in sophistication, with some broadcasting remote ID information, effectively serving as a digital license plate that can help law enforcement identify the aircraft and locate its operator. Other drones use electric motors that produce little heat and utilize a hair-thin fiber optic cable that does not emit a signal, making electronic tracking impossible.
“Any defense built around a decision at the fence line has already failed, because detection has to happen miles out,” McGee said.
Previously, state and local level agencies had limited ability to combat drones, with only four federal agencies having the authority to disable drones. However, in December 2025, Congress passed the SAFER SKIES Act, which allowed all levels of law enforcement to conduct counter-drone operations. Officers seeking to actively disrupt or disable drones must complete specialized FBI training and certification—a requirement intended in part to prevent counter-drone systems from interfering with legitimate aviation.
“In May of this year, a medevac flight lost GPS during a military jamming exercise at White Sands Missile Range and crashed near Ruidoso, New Mexico, killing all four aboard,” said McGee.
Since the Safer Skies Act was passed, 61 officers in total have been certified to utilize anti-drone technologies, leading McGee to assert that the federal pipeline is ineffective in countering drones at the scale required.
According to McGee, the most effective technique to counter drones available to law enforcement has been pilot interdiction. Drone interdiction, in which a pilot intercepts a drone, requires less specialized certification and helps minimize risk to citizens.
“One Ukrainian interceptor type alone downed over 3000 Russian drones in a single month—roughly 40 percent of everything that Ukraine stopped,” said McGee.
El Paso Police Department Sgt. Cory Balke testified regarding the threats posed to Texas by cartel-operated drones.
“[T]he use of cartel drones and the way that they have organized their structures, primarily where we’re seeing in Ciudad Juarez, is very organized. The threat is very high, and they are very capable. They are just as good at what they do as we are with what we do. They use the exact same drones that we use. They have $30,000 drones. They can recognize somebody at a mile, can track a moving vehicle. When I say they use the exact same drones, they use the exact same drones that we have. They do the tactics against us the exact same way we do it with them,” Balke said
Balke added that the cartels are able to counter the best anti-drone technology that the U.S. government has at its disposal and occasionally weaponize the unmanned vehicles in an attempt to hurt officers. To date, El Paso PD has tracked 1,776 confirmed cases of cross-border infiltrations by drones. Balke clarified that the department can only confirm drones with digital license plates.
“When we look at other signatures from radars and some of the sensors that we saw come across the border in that time frame, it was closer to 14,000. So we’ve seen everything from the $500 small drone to the $60,000 six-propped agricultural drone carrying a duffel bag, capable of moving 200 kilograms of whatever item it wants to at a time.”
Balke noted that his team has used data from drones to coordinate with Mexican officials in order to make arrests out of the country. However, El Paso PD faces a significant challenge due to drone pilots spoofing their location. Spoofing is a process that falsifies locational data to protect the actual location of the pilot.
In order to properly combat the current threats that drones pose to national security, Balke suggested the creation of a drone program.
“We need more jurisdiction. We need more authorities at the local level. Having a drone program is also a very good start to a counter-drone program. At one point in time, El Paso had one of the first and the largest DFR programs in the nation. We sat at 22 docks spread up all around the city. We built that entire program for 1.2 million dollars, and we have not spent more than licensing renewal to maintain it every year after,” he said.
