U.S. Customs and Border Protection detected more than 37,000 drone flights near the border in fiscal 2026, down from more than 42,000 the year before, a CBP spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement published Wednesday. CBP presented both numbers as the scale of a cartel threat that includes monitoring law enforcement, scouting crossing points and coordinating smuggling.

The military describes a rising trend. Joint Task Force-Southern Border counted 378 drone incursions in 30 days between August and September and said the number was climbing. CBP’s statement doesn’t say which border its flight counts cover. In February, a CBP official put the fiscal 2025 count for the US-Mexico border alone at 34,682.

Cartels Fly Commercial Drones To Learn Border Agents’ Routines

Most cartels rely on off-the-shelf commercial drones, and at the border their main jobs are surveillance and logistics, says Austin Doctor, who directs strategic initiatives at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center (NCITE) at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Armed attacks are documented more often in Mexico.

Doctor told Fox News Digital that cartels “look to establish a pattern of life for U.S. security personnel.” He said larger agricultural drones are starting to appear, and that cartels keep changing their designs for bigger payloads and better resistance to countermeasures. NCITE research identifies the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) as a major driver of drone adoption, though use has spread across cartels. NCITE’s February report counted 221 weaponized drone incidents in Mexico from 2021 to 2025, with CJNG holding the largest attributed share.

Doctor said Tijuana is among the exceptions to the pattern of attacks farther inside Mexico. A year ago tonight, on October 15, 2025, drones dropped homemade explosives packed with nails and metal fragments on the Baja California attorney general’s anti-kidnapping unit there. Attorney General María Elena Andrade said the blasts damaged vehicles in the courtyard and injured no one.

Mexico Detained An Alleged Tijuana Drone Operator After A CBP Tip

Mexico’s Defense Secretariat says soldiers used CBP information to detect a drone that flew into Tijuana from the United States on September 14. Patrols detained a man the ministry calls its presumed operator in the Nido de las Águilas neighborhood. They seized a handgun, ammunition and the drone’s controller.

He was handed to authorities to determine his legal status, according to the Defense Secretariat’s account, which says the drone was watching routes used to smuggle people into the US. The detection came during Águila Alta, a binational counter-drone operation on the Tijuana-San Diego line, with each country’s forces working its own side, scheduled for September 7 to 21. On September 18, Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla said four drones had been disabled so far, all on the Mexican side, and that none carried weapons or explosives, Uno TV reported. Fox News Digital, citing the ministry, puts the operation’s total at five.

Mexico has since moved counter-drone gear east. On September 26, Coast Guard personnel exchanged gunfire with people on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande near Garceno, Texas, the service said. President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexican forces recorded no shots from Mexican territory. About a week later, the Army and National Guard sent 500 troops to five Tamaulipas border towns, backed by UH-60 helicopters and mobile and semi-fixed counter-drone systems, Ruptura 360 reported. Separately, the Navy said on October 3 that its Operation Sable had 159 personnel, 11 vehicles and two drones out of Matamoros.

CBP’s February Numbers Put 7,678 Of 42,360 Flights On The Canadian Border

The 42,000 figure matches the sum of two counts CBP gave for fiscal 2025. A CBP official told Cronkite News in February that the agency detected 34,682 drone flights within 500 meters of the US-Mexico border from October 2024 through September 2025, and 7,678 along the Canadian border, 42,360 combined.

CBP’s statement to Fox doesn’t say whether its “over 42,000” includes the Canadian border, and it gives no split for fiscal 2026. Fox ran both totals in a story about cartels on the southern border, and the same story notes that the number of cartel-operated drones is unknown. Neither CBP’s statement to Fox nor the February figures, as published, say how many of the flights CBP ties to criminal groups. The Mexican-border figure counts flights within 500 meters of the line, a band that takes in parts of El Paso and San Diego.

DroneXL’s Take

When I reported the military’s 378 count on October 6, I said Joint Task Force-Southern Border should publish its numbers monthly and by sector. CBP should do the same. In February a CBP official gave Cronkite News a Mexican-border figure for fiscal 2025, so the agency can release fiscal 2026’s the same way, split by border, with the share it attributes to cartels. A near-border flight count isn’t a cartel drone count. I’d expect a 500-meter band through El Paso to catch hobbyists and real estate shoots along with the drones scouting Border Patrol positions, and CBP’s published figures don’t separate them. By CBP’s own February numbers, the 42,000 it gave Fox appears to include 7,678 flights on the Canadian border. In my view, putting that number in a statement about Mexican cartels blurs the threat it is meant to measure. The 5,000-flight drop could have come from either border or from a change in how CBP counts, and I’d want to know which before anyone sets it next to the 75% decline military officials credited to the Army’s laser in the Rio Grande Valley.

Sources: Fox News Digital, Cronkite News, Mexico’s Defense Secretariat via Zeta Tijuana, Uno TV, Stars and Stripes, Ruptura 360, La Crónica de Hoy, Expansión

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