Feds deploy surveillance blimp over busy smuggling corridor

SANTA TERESA, New Mexico ( Border Report ) – A new high-tech surveillance blimp has arrived at the U.S. Border Patrol’s Santa Teresa Station in southern New Mexico.

Exclusive images obtained by Border Report on Thursday show the white aerostat tethered at the back of a station and agents checking out what will soon become an additional tool to do their job in one of the nation’s busiest – and deadliest – migrant smuggling corridors.

Federal officials told Border Report that the aerostat will be deployed in the coming days and operated by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Aerostats assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection agencies in monitoring dangerous areas, and along with autonomous surveillance towers and AMO aircraft, they provide additional awareness against illicit smuggling activity in any given area, CBP said.

“El Paso Sector is deploying an aerostat just west of the Port of Santa Teresa, New Mexico in September 2024 to monitor the area of U.S.-Mexico border in that zone.  This area is part of the Santa Teresa, New Mexico Border Patrol Station area of operation which has the largest number of migrant encounters in the El Paso Sector,” CBP said in a statement to Border Report. “This area also has a significant number of human smuggling related deaths and rescues as the area’s harsh desert conditions and remote terrain present a dangerous risk to migrants who are often abandoned in the area by criminal smugglers.”

Part of the Tactical Aerostat Program (TAS), the blimp will keep watch over an area within the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol, where migrant apprehensions and smuggling attempts remain constant even as encounters have plummeted in other parts of the sector.

Border agents, local police, and first responders in the area have been kept busy all year due to frequent encounters with injured or deceased migrants . The Border Patrol, as of last Tuesday, had run across 168 deceased migrants in the sector, with many having perished this spring and summer in the New Mexico desert after getting lost or being abandoned by smugglers.

A pair of federal legislators from New Mexico last month expressed their optimism, stating that they hoped the new aerostat would significantly reduce migrant deaths by helping border agents locate migrants in distress before they perish .

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