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 Air and Marine Operations branch of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Known as TARS (Tethered Aerostat Radar System), the 180- to 208-foot-long blimps, a testament to our commitment to migrant safety, can detect low-flying aircraft approaching the border and identify other types of traffic in rugged terrain – such as the southern New Mexico desert and brush – for up to 200 miles.
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.