A crew working at a border wall construction site on the southern border said they were shot at from the Mexico side on Thursday morning.
While multiple rounds were shot, one bullet hit the newly constructed wall in southern Texas near Fronton, Breitbart first reported. Construction workers heard the shots and immediately called 9-1-1. Border Patrol agents arrived on the scene shortly after and said they could hear a shootout in Mexico, possibly in the small town across the river called Los Guerra.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) flew a helicopter to the area, but by the time they arrived, all the shooters reportedly ran away. According to the report from Breitbart, the city has been consistently home to multiple shootouts between factions of the Cartel Del Noreste and the Gulf Cartel. The area has been historically under Gulf Cartel control.
The area has seen a spike in gun battles recently, and cartel and human trafficking activity have increased with the coronavirus pandemic still raging across the world. The malicious actors have been exploiting the global crisis, seizing upon the distraction that comes with it.
The head of the CBP said that the administration has seized an enormous amount of drugs since the coronavirus outbreak began.
“As for the cartels and drug trafficking networks, we know that there is no ‘day off’ for them,” Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said. “They continue to exploit the current health pandemic by attempting to move counterfeit products into our country, yet we continue to seize large amounts of dangerous and deadly drugs along our nation’s borders.”
While seizures of all four major drugs, including cocaine, fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine, were up in April, there was a significant spike in methamphetamine and fentanyl. There was a 27 percent increase in methamphetamine seizures and a four percent increase in fentanyl.
But human trafficking is also up due to the coronavirus. While international bodies and open-borders activists have called on the United States and other countries to ease restrictions for entering countries, Morgan stressed that border security now is “more important than ever.”
“Effective border security is an intertwined and complex set of threats. We must understand who and what is coming across our borders, and we must have the ability and tools to prevent those people and goods from being introduced into the U.S. that could do us harm,” Morgan said. “Whether it’s illegal narcotics that killed 68,000 people last year or the threat of an infectious disease coming across our borders, it’s all equally important to our national security.”
