Mexico’s top military commander has acknowledged that his forces have not shot down or intercepted a single cartel drone along the country’s northern border since launching a joint operation with U.S. authorities earlier this month — a striking admission that comes as American forces report more than 300 drone takedowns so far this year.
According to Breitbart News, Army Secretary Ricardo Trevilla Trejo confirmed this week that his troops have logged no intercepts and no arrests under Operation Aguila Alta, or “High Eagle,” the information-sharing and interdiction effort that Mexico announced with considerable fanfare at the start of September. As part of the rollout, Mexico’s Army said it had deployed 800 troops to the western stretch of the border.
A joint operation with little to show
The operation was framed as a binational answer to the growing use of unmanned aircraft by cartel networks operating along the U.S.-Mexico line. Under the arrangement, the two governments would swap intelligence and each side would work to bring down the drones. But Trevilla Trejo’s public accounting suggests the Mexican side has yet to produce a single takedown.
In his remarks, the army secretary also pushed back on the premise that cartel drone activity is surging along Mexico’s northern frontier, saying his forces have not observed an increase in drone usage there. He described the aircraft in question as commercially available models, and said they are primarily flown by human smugglers conducting surveillance — watching for the presence of U.S. Border Patrol agents so that trafficking operations can be routed around them.
That characterization contrasts with the broader public debate over cartel drones, which has often centered on weaponized or modified aircraft used for more than surveillance. Trevilla Trejo’s comments suggest that, from the Mexican military’s vantage point, the threat on its side of the border looks considerably more modest than the joint operation’s launch messaging implied.
U.S. forces rack up interceptions
The asymmetry in results was not lost on the Mexican commander. Trevilla Trejo said U.S. forces have been the more effective partner when it comes to knocking drones out of the sky, crediting American personnel with intercepting more than 300 drones over the course of this year.
He added that his staff is expected to meet with U.S. law enforcement counterparts in the coming days to update the operation — a session that will likely focus on why the Mexican military’s contribution has so far amounted to troop deployments and information sharing rather than tangible interdictions.
The gap between announcement and outcome has drawn scrutiny to how the two governments measure success under High Eagle. Mexico committed 800 troops to the western border sector, and the operation’s design called for both countries to actively intercept drones, not merely track them. Yet by the army secretary’s own account, none of those troops have brought down an aircraft or detained anyone in connection with drone activity.
What the two sides say the drones are doing
Smuggling networks have long used aerial surveillance to guide groups across remote stretches of the border, and the arrival of cheap, widely available consumer drones has made that practice easier and harder to counter. Trevilla Trejo’s description of the devices as commercial models used for monitoring Border Patrol positions fits that pattern — small, replaceable aircraft that can be launched quickly and abandoned without much loss.
But the same accessibility that makes consumer drones useful to smugglers also complicates any enforcement strategy built around intercepting them. A takedown requires detection, tracking and a means of disabling the aircraft, often within minutes and sometimes in rugged terrain. American forces have clearly invested heavily in that capability, judging by the volume of interceptions Trevilla Trejo cited. Mexico’s military, by its own account, has not matched that effort in practice.
The coming staff-level meetings between Mexican military officials and U.S. law enforcement will test whether High Eagle can move beyond its information-sharing phase. For now, the operation’s public record consists of a launch announcement, a troop deployment and an acknowledgment from Mexico’s own army secretary that the scoreboard on his side remains at zero.
Trevilla Trejo did not indicate that Mexico plans to change its rules of engagement or expand its interdiction role, and he offered no timeline for when Mexican forces might begin logging takedowns of their own.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/border/2026/09/13/all-talk-no-action-mexicos-anti-drone-pact-with-u-s-delivers-zero-takedowns/