Laredo Police Chief Miguel Rodriguez told reporters Wednesday morning that officers will mitigate and take down any drone flown over the DoubleTree by Hilton fire scene at 800 Garden Street in Laredo, Texas. The three-alarm fire was reported at 12:52 a.m. on October 7 and spread across several floors of the 14-story hotel. Four people went to Laredo Medical Center for smoke inhalation, four more sought care on their own, and nobody died.

Mayor Dr. Victor Treviño declared a local state of disaster at 10 a.m. that runs through October 14. Fire Chief Guillermo Heard said the building is structurally unstable, Treviño said officials saw cracks in parts of it, and the declaration cites a possible collapse, so the city is flying a drone of its own to inspect it before anyone goes back in.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s list of active flight restrictions carried none for Laredo as of Wednesday evening.

Laredo Police Will Mitigate Drones While the City Flies Its Own

Rodriguez told the Wednesday briefing that officers hold a closure perimeter around the hotel, from Jefferson Street south to Shea Street, while firefighters and engineers work the building. The perimeter could stay up into the weekend. Of the 203 registered guests, 115 had been accounted for by the briefing.

Rodriguez said drones could interfere with firefighters, engineers and other emergency personnel at the scene, and officers would step in if anyone flew one. “If they are flying drones, we’re going to mitigate the drones,” Rodriguez said, according to the Laredo Morning Times. “We’re going to take them down.”

Treviño called drone technology essential to assessing and investigating the fire. Out of an abundance of caution, he said, “a drone is being used to help assess the structural integrity of the hotel.”

Laredo PD knows the hardware. It runs a drone-as-first-responder program on BRINC aircraft launched from fixed stations, and in May its RAVEN drones found a burglary suspect hiding in brush. Rodriguez also said videos of drivers stopping on Interstate 35 to watch the fire were circulating on social media, and that the fire left him without enough officers to deal with them, LMT reported.

Federal Law Lets Local Police Take Down Drones Only With FBI Certification

The SAFER SKIES Act, signed December 18, 2025, and a Justice and Homeland Security interim final rule in force since July 1 let state and local police mitigate drones under their own authority. Each officer needs Mitigation Certification from the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center, a two-week residential course.

As of July 1, when the rule took effect, 61 officers at roughly 46 agencies nationwide held that certification, and the FBI’s drone program chief put the number trained since then at roughly 500 by September. DroneXL covered the numbers when 1,500 agencies lined up for counter-drone powers in September, and the 2026 defense bill that created the authority in December.

Certification is only the entry ticket. A mitigation needs a signed operations plan, a credible-threat finding, equipment from the federal Authorized Systems List, notice to air traffic control within five minutes of switching the system on, and a report within 48 hours. Uncoordinated mitigation draws civil fines of up to $100,000 per violation.

Neither the chief’s remarks nor the city’s statements on Wednesday said whether any Laredo officer holds the mitigation certification. In Wednesday’s statements and in DroneXL’s coverage of the department’s drone program since 2025, Laredo PD has described flying aircraft, not downing them.

No FAA Flight Restriction Covered Laredo on Wednesday Evening

The FAA’s temporary flight restriction list showed 91 active restrictions at 6 p.m. Central on Wednesday. None covered Laredo. The nearest Texas entries were a VIP movement and a security restriction in San Antonio, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) to the northeast, and both expired the same day.

A fire department or city can ask the FAA for a disaster-area restriction under 14 CFR 91.137, the rule used for wildfire TFRs. Once one is in place, flying inside it is a federal violation and most consumer drones show the boundary in their flight app.

Without one, the federal hooks are thinner than at a wildfire. The 2018 drone statute, 18 U.S.C. 39B, makes it a crime to knowingly or recklessly interfere with an occupied aircraft, and its companion, 18 U.S.C. 40A, covers wildfire suppression. A hotel fire with no helicopter overhead is neither, which leaves the FAA’s careless-operation rule under Part 107. The federal statutes fit when a drone pilot hit an LAPD helicopter in 2020 and when drone incursions grounded firefighting aircraft over Spokane in August.

DroneXL’s Take

Rodriguez is right about the airspace. Nobody flying a Mini over a burning high-rise with a collapse risk is doing anything but getting in the way of the city’s own drone and the crews under it, so stay home and watch the news like everyone else.

He is wrong about the remedy, and the gap matters because the law changed this year to make it precise. Taking a drone down is now a federal process with a named course, a named list of hardware and a $100,000 fine for skipping the paperwork. A chief who means it has one certified officer and an operations plan on file, and a chief who does not has a figure of speech.

Mitigate at a briefing can also mean finding the pilot and ordering the drone down, which needs no certification at all. I think Rodriguez meant the figure of speech or the order to land, because a department holding the certification would have said so. Either way, a chief should only promise the takedown he can legally carry out.

The tool Laredo actually has costs nothing. A request to the FAA can put a disaster TFR over Garden Street, and DJI’s app then flags the zone for every pilot in Webb County. That stops more hobby pilots than a threat ever will, and it keeps the officers at the scene on the right side of the same federal rules they are enforcing.

Sources: Laredo Morning Times, Laredo Morning Times, KGNS, FAA TFR list, Congressional Research Service

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.