Colored Roadside Strings Reveal Cartel Drone Drop Tactics in Yuma County

Yuma County deputies have been finding blue and red strings stretched across roadways, sometimes hundreds of feet long, that county officials say are tethers left when Mexican controllers drop drug payloads into nets in residential backyards. Sheriff Leon Wilmot, in office since 2013, said the county has seen an uptick in the tactic since about 2020 and that “lately, the sheriff said, the county gets three or four incursions across the border per week that he knows of.” Wilmot called the trend “a significant public safety threat that needs to be addressed, because the cartels have unlimited budget, and they’re going to do what they need to do to get their product across, and they do not value human life.”

Evidence recovered on Yuma County roads has helped officials piece together how drones are being used. Deputies and Border Patrol agents report controllers drop nets into backyards to receive payloads, then leave the long colored tethers as they retrieve rigs. The tactic sits alongside other documented uses: small drones delivering one or two pounds of fentanyl pills into the San Luis area and larger platforms used for mass “dope drops,” according to local Border Patrol descriptions.

The scale along the border has surged. U.S. Customs and Border Protection detected 34,682 drone flights within 500 meters of the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025, compared with 7,678 detections along the Canada border, a CBP official disclosed. A senior military witness testified to Congress in March that more than 1,000 drones per month were crossing into U.S. airspace near the Mexico border, and the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center reported CJNG-linked operations accounted for roughly one in five cartel drone attacks from 2021 to 2025, 42 incidents that resulted in 21 deaths. Investigators have identified models such as the DJI Avata 2, which retails for about $600.

Local law enforcement capacity is limited. Wilmot likened Yuma County to the size of Connecticut and said his small department is “stretched thin” and largely relies on federal partners. Border Patrol uses radars, radiofrequency sensors and infrared cameras to detect drones, but municipalities like San Luis lack jammers, net guns and other mitigation gear. San Luis Police Lt. Emmanuel Botello warned of the danger of kinetic responses: “When we are shooting particularly into the sky, we can’t escape the consequences of where our ammunition is going to end up, where our bullets gonna land.” Botello urged technology-based disabling tools, saying, “There are counter drone technologies that allow somebody operating a drone to actually immobilize , freeze, or obtain information from the other drone and be able to stop it in a remotely manner.”

Policy debates are active in Phoenix and Washington. Arizona House Bill 2733 would authorize law enforcement immunity to shoot down or disable suspected drug-carrying drones within 30 miles of the international border, a proposal local police say raises safety and legal questions. At the federal level, the Department of Homeland Security announced a $115 million acceleration plan on Jan. 12 to procure counter-drone systems ahead of major international events, and CBP agents in the Yuma Sector continue to warn that “the surveillance is the majority of what we see here in Yuma,” creating an enforcement gap that local sheriffs and border agents say must be filled by targeted equipment, clearer legal authority and sustained federal support.