The U.S. military used a laser in southern Texas’ Rio Grande Valley to shoot down three Mexican drug cartel drones this week near the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. officials said on Thursday (August 28, 2026).
The North American Aerospace Defence Command and U.S. The military did not give the precise location of the strikes nor make clear whether it took place over U.S. or Mexican territory. Customs and Border Protection personnel. The announcement comes as U.S.
Northern Command said in a statement that the operation took place late on Tuesday (August 25) and early on Wednesday (August 26) and used the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser. President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to clamp down on immigration and cartels, seeking to fulfill promises from his 2024 presidential campaign. Since its establishment in 2025, the border task force has conducted tens of thousands of detection and monitoring patrols and thousands of observation flights, the task force said.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said any unilateral U.S. action on Mexican soil would be a grave breach of her country’s sovereignty. The military said the drones posed “a physical threat” to U.S. military and U.S. “Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” Major General Curtis Taylor, the commander of Joint Task Force–Southern Border, said in a statement.
In February, the military accidentally shot down a U.S. government drone using a laser-based anti-drone system, congressional aides told Reuters at the time.
