Texas Working to Block Cartels' Workarounds After Trump Policies Shut Down Border

https://amac.us/newsline/national-security/texas-working-to-block-cartels-
workarounds-after-trump-policies-shut-down-border/

Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has ordered the state’s General 
Land Office to inspect state-owned properties along the southern U.S. 
border, focusing on vulnerable zones such as Hudspeth County, for signs of 
cartel-built tunnels. 

Southern border encounters went from a daily average of 7,052 under former 
President Joe Biden to 910 under President Donald Trump as of October 8, 
forcing cartels to innovate in a game of trafficking leapfrog to avoid 
heightened Trump-imposed enforcement above ground. 

“We’ve gotten the message that they are starting to think about tunneling, 
and so there’s some new technology on the front. We’re partnering up with 
local officials and federal officials, and we’ll do everything we can for 
complete operational control of our border and to keep our communities 
safe and prosperous for our kids,” Buckingham told Just The News. 

The directive follows a string of tunnel discoveries in San Diego and El 
Paso, Texas, within the past year, as smuggling organizations increasingly 
turn to subterranean routes. 

GLO teams will incorporate drone and aerial surveillance into regular land 
checks to spot possible entry points or excavation evidence, while working 
closely with federal partners to target high-priority parcels. 

“They are kind of like cockroaches that run to the corners and hide in the 
crevices,” Buckingham also said. “They’re going to continue to bring 
ingenuity to their craft. You can’t expect that you’re going to negatively 
impact their business and then not to try and find another way.”

The effort dovetails with a new federal initiative: a $100 million 
commitment from Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection for 
cutting-edge detection equipment, alongside the Trump administration’s 
classification of Mexican cartels as terrorist groups, which expands 
enforcement powers.

The announcement cites that the tunnel survey extends earlier GLO 
operations, including the 2023 assertion of state ownership over Fronton 
Island in Starr County – enabling Operation Flat Top to remove dense brush 
and disrupt criminal activity – and the 2024 purchase of a 1,402-acre Rio 
Grande ranch, where 1.5 miles of border wall were finished by early 2025. 
Last November, Buckingham made the ranch available to the incoming Trump 
administration for use as deportation hubs and operational staging sites. 

In June, U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered a tunnel system stretching 
more than 1,000 feet into the interior of the United States from Mexico at 
the border with Southern California. Though incomplete, the drug smuggling 
tunnel was intended to be a secret passage for Mexican drug cartels to 
move product north.

Mexican cartel tunnels along the U.S.-Mexico border first gained 
prominence in the early 1990s, with the discovery of a sophisticated 
1,400-foot passage built by the Sinaloa Cartel under the Otay Mesa area 
near San Diego, used primarily for drug smuggling. 

Over the decades, the tunnels evolved in complexity, incorporating 
ventilation systems, rail tracks, and electricity, as evidenced by a 
4,300-foot tunnel uncovered in 2020 connecting Tijuana to San Diego, which 
facilitated both narcotics and human trafficking. 

By the 2010s and 2020s, U.S. authorities had detected over 180 such 
tunnels since 1990, many operated by groups like the Jalisco New 
Generation Cartel, highlighting a multifaceted role in smuggling massive 
quantities of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and illegal aliens across the 
border.


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November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.