Mexican gangs armed by Eric Holder now use drones to smuggle drugs

(NaturalNews) Mexico-based drug cartels are using technology to smuggle drugs into the United States, including small drones like one that crashed in a city located along the southwest border in California, authorities said.

As reported by Fox News and other media, police in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, just south of San Diego, crash-landed in the parking lot of a supermarket because it was overloaded with methamphetamine.

"Tijuana police spokesman Jorge Morrua said authorities were alerted after the drone fell Tuesday night near the San Ysidro crossing at Mexico's border with California," Fox News reported.

Authorities retrieved six packets of the dangerous addictive drug, weighing, in sum, more than six pounds. The packets were duct-taped to a six-propeller, remotely controlled aircraft.

Not the first drone-related smuggling incident

Morrua noted that Mexican police are looking into where the drone originated from and who might have been controlling it. He added that the incident was not the first time that Mexico-based drug gangs and cartels had employed drone technology to smuggle drugs into the United States.

Other methods, besides trafficking drugs across the border using human "mules," include catapults, tunnels and ultralight aircraft, said authorities.

Fox News reported that, in April, U.S. authorities in South Carolina discovered a drone outside the fence of a prison that was being used to carry cellphones, marijuana and tobacco.

As reported by National Review Online, one U.S. border official downplayed the incident. "To date, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not intercepted any drones smuggling narcotics across the borders into the United States," CBP spokesman Carlos Lazo said in a statement. "In collaboration with our federal, state, local and international law enforcement partners, CBP remains vigilant against emerging trends and ever-changing tactics employed by transnational criminal organizations behind illegal attempts to smuggle narcotics into the U.S."

"In San Diego, the street value, at last account, for a six-pound load would be about $48,000," DEA Special Agent Matt Barden told CNN. "Once you get it across the border, that stuff's like gold."

CNN further reported:

This wasn't the first time a drone was used in a smuggling attempt from Mexico, according to drug war analysts, U.S. officials and local Mexican police.

But the incident amplified concerns about border security and officers' safety.

"I would hate to belittle 6 pounds of meth," Barden said. "That's like saying 6 pounds of heroin isn't bad... but I think the big thing to look at is the fact that the cartels or drug traffickers from Mexico are using drones in their playbook.

"My greater fear, being an agent, is what a drone means to officer safety. That to me, personally, being a tactical officer, that's my concern," he said.

The "Fast and Furious" connection

Some of the Mexico-based drug cartels may have been armed with high-powered U.S. military-style weapons due to an Obama Justice Department "gun walking" operation known as "Fast and Furious," a scandal which eventually led to a historic congressional vote to hold outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt.

As former CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson said in her 2014 book, Stonewalled, thousands of guns were purchased by cartel straw buyers from U.S. gun dealers -- in cooperation with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- and were then allowed to be taken back across the border. The idea, supposedly, was for U.S. authorities to then "track" those guns back to cartel leaders, who would then be arrested and prosecuted.

But, as Attkisson wrote^[1]:

The Big Fish could then somehow be arrested and brought to swift justice, though nobody could ever say how that would have really worked since the bad guys are on foreign soil and, under international law, the united States can't exactly march into Mexico and just take them. In the end, it didn't matter because they never caught any Big Fish anyway.

Two federal agents and scores of Mexican citizens have been killed with guns the Obama Administration allowed to "walk" during this operation.

During her investigation, Attkisson discovered that a similar operation, called "Operation Wide Receiver," began around 2005, during the Bush Administration. She noted that operation involved only several hundred guns and was eventually abandoned by the Bush Justice Department in 2007 out of concerns that the guns could be misused (which was prophetic).^[2]

When Obama was elected, the program was revived,^[3] in part as a means to justify new gun control measures.^[4]

Sources:

http://www.foxnews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com

http://www.nationalreview.com

http://www.cnn.com

[1] Attkisson, Sharyl. 2014. Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington. New York: HarperCollins. Pg. 93.

[2] Ibid, pg. 133

[3] Ibid, pg. 135.

[4] Ibid, pg. 114.