Trump Dead Serious About Border: U.S. Military Using High-Tech Spy Planes To Watch Cartels

President Donald Trump is proving how serious he is about targeting the Mexican drug cartels that he has designated as terrorist organizations, as the U.S. military is reportedly using high-tech spy planes to monitor the southern border.

At least 18 missions have been flown over the southwestern U.S. and around the Baja California Peninsula in the past two weeks, CNN reported. Eleven of the flights used Navy P-8s, and one used the famed U-2 spy plane initially used to spy on the former Soviet Union.

“I think the cartels would be foolish to take on the military, but we know they’ve taken on the Mexican military before. But now we have the United States military,” border czar Tom Homan stated last week. “Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely, because the cartels are making record amounts of money.”

In late December, Mexico’s leftist president seemingly attempted to take away any chance Trump could order the use of military force against the infamous drug cartels that control much of Mexico and traffic lethal drugs across the American border. President Claudia Sheinbaum told a news conference, “There won’t be an invasion. It’s not going to happen.”

Trump had said, “All foreign gang members will be expelled and I will immediately designate the [drug] cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. I will do so immediately.”

Trump’s choice for national security advisor, hard-core conservative Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), co-introduced legislation in January 2023 calling for an “Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Mexican cartels for trafficking lethal fentanyl and other related activities that have caused destabilization in the Western Hemisphere.”

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Defense Secretary, said the cartels are “terrorist-like organizations poisoning our population. … If it takes military action, that’s what it may take, eventually. Obviously, you’re gonna have to be smart about it. Obviously, the precision strikes. But if you put the fear in the minds of the drug lords, at least as a start, [and] they can’t operate in the open with impunity, [it] changes the way they operate.”

Last October, a news report revealed that the brutal Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico had “given permission” for its members to fire at U.S. Border Patrol agents. An internal memo was transmitted to federal agents in the El Paso Sector warning the agents of the new danger, NewsNation reported.