As Congress debates whether to send $100 billion to the Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, in defense of those countries’ borders, the U.S. border remains wide open, leaving our country virtually defenseless. Year after year the Biden Administration invites a continuous mass invasion of foreign nationals into the U.S. Its policies have not only removed our border defenses but have financially incentivized illegal entry and facilitated the transport of illegals across the country. As a result, we are being exploited by agents of a wide range of enemies from hostile foreign powers to terrorist cartels. They have sent through the open borders all manner of spies, sex traffickers, drug traffickers, terrorists, and migrants. Even those intent on leaving their native lands for employment in the U.S. now form a massive illegal underground, an illegal economy, comprised of some twenty to thirty million, replacing American workers at businesses and construction sites and working for exceedingly low wages beneath legal minimums.
But one crucial aspect of the border invasion has escaped public notice. The invasions are occurring not only by land but also by air. Foreign drones from large predator style models 28 feet long with wing spans of 41 feet that fly upwards of 50,000 feet above ground are illegally entering our airspace along with tiny drones. They are doing so every day without opposition, either from Customs and Border Protection or from the U.S. Air Force.
Publicity about the Biden Administration’s failure to respond timely to the China balloon that wafted its way over U.S. military installations gave rise to public outrage. But the Administration’s ambivalence to the China balloon is being replicated daily in its refusal to act against a far more extensive surveillance threat coming from thousands of alien drones flying in U.S. air space.
The cartels use drones for multiple purposes: to smuggle fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and other drugs into the U.S. and to engage in surveillance useful to the cartels and to other enemies of the United States. CBP agents detect images of drones with thermal cameras and binoculars but they lack authority from the Biden Administration to shoot them down. The U.S. Air Force is also not tasked by this administration with destroying drone intruders. Consequently, CBP agents rely on drone tracking, hoping for drones to land in the U.S. in locations where they can retrieve them, a rare occurrence.
On February 7, 2023, the Chief Patrol Agent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, Gloria Chavez, testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee that there were over 25,000 drone crossings above her sector in 2022. She testified that drone incursions take place all along the southern border. She explained that the cartels use the drones for drug drops and surveillance, enabling them to avoid CBP interdiction and maximize successful distribution of drugs into the U.S. interior.
The complete failure of this Administration to interdict drone air space incursions by shooting down the invaders creates a massive hole in American air defenses. Taking advantage of that weakness, the terrorist cartels routinely deploy drones, but we know the cartels are not alone. The same air space avenue of entry is of course available to China, Iran, and North Korea. They too can send drones across our borders or can pay the cartels to do so for them.
On the land and sea, a wide range of groups intent on espionage, terrorism, violent criminal activity, and illegal drug and sex trafficking have entered the United States since the start of the Biden Administration. We are now inundated with those criminal elements as violent crime spikes nationwide. The Biden Administration and its allies in Congress not only look the other way as agents of the cartels and of foreign powers cross the U.S. border on land but also as they do so through air space incursions.
For years, the U.S. government has been on notice that the principal manufacturer of commercial drone technology in the world, the Chinese company Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI), has enabled its drones to collect and transmit to the CCP images and data whereover those drones fly in the United States. DJI donated drones to over 43 local police departments across the United States with many putting them to use, and it is suspected that information collected by those drones has been transmitted to the CCP.
While those in the intelligence community, in Congress, and in the security industry have sounded the alarm for years about the need to counter the drone threat, the Biden Administration has failed to take serious countermeasures, leaving not only the terrestrial border of the United States wide open to our enemies, but also our airspace.
This article was written on Feb 13, 2024, and published on Townhall.
Jonathan Emord is a leading constitutional law and litigation expert, the author of five critically acclaimed books, and a Candidate for the US Senate.