Texas working to block cartels’ workarounds after Trump policies shut down border

Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has ordered the state's General Land Office to inspect state-owned properties along the southern U.S. border, focusing on vulnerable zones such as Hudspeth County, for signs of cartel-built tunnels. 

Southern border encounters went from a daily average of 7,052 under former President Joe Biden to 910 under President Donald Trump as of October 8, forcing cartels to innovate in a game of trafficking leap frog to avoid heightened Trump-imposed enforcement above ground. 

"We've gotten the message that they are starting to think about tunneling, and so there's some new technology on the front. We're partnering up with local officials and federal officials, and we'll do everything we can for complete operational control of our border and to keep our communities safe and prosperous for our kids," Buckingham told Just The News. 

The directive follows a string of tunnel discoveries in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, within the past year, as smuggling organizations increasingly turn to subterranean routes. 

GLO teams will incorporate drone and aerial surveillance into regular land checks to spot possible entry points or excavation evidence, while working closely with federal partners to target high-priority parcels. 

"They are kind of like cockroaches that run to the corners and hide in the crevices," Buckingham also said. "They're going to continue to bring ingenuity to their craft. You can't expect that you're going to negatively impact their business and then not to try and find another way."

The effort dovetails with a new federal initiative: a $100 million commitment from Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection for cutting-edge detection equipment, alongside the Trump administration’s classification of Mexican cartels as terrorist groups, which expands enforcement powers.

The announcement cites that the tunnel survey extends earlier GLO operations, including the 2023 assertion of state ownership over Fronton Island in Starr County – enabling Operation Flat Top to remove dense brush and disrupt criminal activity – and the 2024 purchase of a 1,402-acre Rio Grande ranch, where 1.5 miles of border wall were finished by early 2025. Last November, Buckingham made the ranch available to the incoming Trump administration for use as deportation hubs and operational staging sites. 

In June, U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered a tunnel system stretching more than 1,000 feet into the interior of the United States from Mexico at the border with Southern California. Though incomplete, the drug smuggling tunnel was intended to be a secret passage for Mexican drug cartels to move product north.

Mexican cartel tunnels along the U.S.-Mexico border first gained prominence in the early 1990s, with the discovery of a sophisticated 1,400-foot passage built by the Sinaloa Cartel under the Otay Mesa area near San Diego, used primarily for drug smuggling. 

Over the decades, the tunnels evolved in complexity, incorporating ventilation systems, rail tracks, and electricity, as evidenced by a 4,300-foot tunnel uncovered in 2020 connecting Tijuana to San Diego, which facilitated both narcotics and human trafficking. 

By the 2010s and 2020s, U.S. authorities had detected over 180 such tunnels since 1990, many operated by groups like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, highlighting a multifaceted role in smuggling massive quantities of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and illegal aliens across the border.