loading . . . Medical emergency evacuation flights heading to El Paso, Texas, were forced to divert to New Mexico on Wednesday after the Federal Aviation Administration shut down all flights in and out of El Paso for 10 days. The order was rescinded after a few hours, but the excuse—Mexican cartel drones breaching the U.S.-Mexico border—doesn’t make any sense, given the fact that drug-smuggling drones do that on a daily basis.
A new report from CBS News suggests that infighting between the FAA and DOD is behind the chaos and confusion around the El Paso airspace. Earlier this week, DOD deployed anti-drone technology to shoot down what were believed to be foreign drones at the border. But at least one of the objects shot down was just a party balloon, according to CBS News.
El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson held a press conference on Wednesday morning to discuss the major disruptions in the city and emphasized the historic nature of DOD’s decision to shut down airspace over a major U.S. city without any notice.
“Medical evacuation flights were forced to divert to Las Cruces. All aviation operations were grounded, including emergency flights. This was a major and unnecessary disruption, one that has not occurred since 9/11,” said Johnson.
The mayor was asked how many emergency flights needed to be diverted, and he replied that he had been on a call with hospital operators this morning but didn’t have an exact number. “But I can tell you that there was a lot of surgical equipment that was coming in from Dallas and other parts of the country to do surgeries here in our community,” said Johnson. “That type of equipment did not show up here in El Paso.”
The initial notice to shut down airspace over El Paso was both last-minute and extremely broad, covering every type of aircraft, including cargo, passenger, and military flights. The order was lifted after a few hours, and the reasons given by President Donald Trump’s officials didn’t make much sense to aviation experts.
“The FAA and DOW [sic] acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a tweet Wednesday, using an acronym for the so-called “Department of War.”
“The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region. The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming,” Duffy continued.
CBS News reports that Wednesday’s disruption in El Paso stemmed from a disagreement between the Pentagon and the FAA over closing airspace for the tests of anti-drone tech, which reportedly included lasers. The U.S. military first shot down a drone with laser technology in 1973, but it wasn’t until the 21st century that lasers became more common in such applications. The Department of Defense’s research and engineering arm tweeted an image of an eagle and lasers shooting down hobby drones on Wednesday.
> DEFEND THE HOMELAND 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/WCUZ6uxwei
>
> — Department of War CTO (@DoWCTO) February 11, 2026
The Pentagon uses nearby Fort Bliss for anti-cartel drone operations, and CBS notes that there appeared to be terrible miscommunication in the lead-up to the airspace closure. The abrupt nature of it all was surprising to local officials.
“No one from the local government or the local military base received any advanced notice more than a few minutes, nor did the mayor,” El Paso City Rep. Chris Canales told the Wall Street Journal. “We have never seen something quite this extreme.”
Shutting down a major city’s airspace on such short notice with a plan for 10 days of closure is so unusual that it’s almost inherently suspicious. And it feels like nobody in the Trump regime is being forthcoming about what’s actually happening in and around El Paso.
Last summer, Homeland Security’s head of counter-drone activity, Steven Willoughby, testified to Congress that there were about 60,000 drone flights within 500 meters of the U.S.-Mexico border in the second half of 2024, according to the New York Times. It seems wildly improbable that some drones at the border (or party balloons) would prompt a 10-day shutdown of airspace unless there was something extremely unusual about the drones and their potential threat to U.S. interests. The drones are often used for drug smuggling, according to DHS.
The airspace closure in El Paso was discussed during a White House meeting on Wednesday morning, and “within minutes the FAA lifted the restrictions,” according to CBS News. It’s unclear if President Trump was involved in that meeting. https://gizmodo.com/one-mexican-cartel-drone-near-el-paso-airspace-actually-party-balloon-report-2000720631
