Mexico-U.S. Team Up to Eliminate Smuggling Scout’s Lookout Posts

U.S. Border Patrol agents and Mexican state police teamed up to destroy a cartel smuggling observation post near Nogales, Arizona.

Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks posted a report on social media showing the incineration of a smuggler’s surveillance site. The site was located on a mountain near Nogales.

“ANOTHER CARTEL LOOKOUT SITE INCINERATED!,” Banks wrote. “This is another blow to transnational criminal organizations attempting to monitor and evade border security efforts.”

Banks said the post was equipped with equipment to spy on Border Patrol and other law enforcement activity in the area.

Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles Project reported this week that cartels are increasingly utilizing drones to carry out border surveillance activities.

Cartel Chronicles journalist “Diego Cervantes” wrote:

Walkie-talkie radios, cell phones, and binoculars, once a critical tool for low-level cartel lookouts stationed in strategic locations to spy on Military, Law Enforcement, and rival cartel movements, are being replaced by drones. The drones, which the cartels can purchase inexpensively online, have evolved to be the preferred method to inform and guide cartel movements after many of the lookouts have been identified, located, and picked up by rival cartels who could easily spot the delinquents. Rival cartel members are now hunting down suspected lookouts loitering on street corners and park benches, sending texts through their phones. It is an automatic indictment on the unsuspecting youths if they are unfortunate enough to be caught holding a walkie-talkie radio.

According to a businessman living in Guamuchil, Sinaloa, who often travels to Culiacan, Sinaloa, the current epicenter of cartel violence, does not see what he referred to as “halcones” or “puntos,” another term for lookouts, as he once did a few months ago. He said the lookouts were easy to spot because they made no attempt to hide and seemed somewhat cavalier in their duties as lookouts. The source mentioned rival cartels have targeted lookouts, significantly reducing their visibility in Sinaloa. Lookout recruits, according to some rumors, are now being cross-trained to fly drones, a far less dangerous alternative to being caught red-handed working with the local cartel.

Bob Price is the Breitbart Texas-Border team’s associate editor and senior news contributor. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday morning talk show. He also serves as president of Blue Wonder Gun Care Products.