What caused the sudden and confusing closure of El Paso's airspace
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Geoff Bennett:
Welcome to the "News Hour."
The commercial airspace over El Paso, Texas was temporarily shut down early this morning. The FAA,citing unspecified security concerns, initially said all flights would be halted for 10 days.
Amna Nawaz:
But just a short time later, the FAA reversed course and reopened the airspace, saying only that the closure was done out of an abundance of caution. The explanations offered by the Trump administration have led to many questions and tough criticism about how it was handled.
William Brangham has more on this chaotic, confusing turn of events.
William Brangham:
That's right, Amna.
After the FAA announced the reopening, an official with the Trump administration blamed the issue on Mexican drug cartels, alleging they'd sent drones near the airport that had to be dealt with. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy stood by that assertion later today.
But multiple news organizations reported that the closure was in fact triggered by a Pentagon trying out a new anti-drone defense system without giving aviation officials enough time to assess its danger to commercial flights.
On the ground in El Paso, though, the city's mayor, Renard Johnson, decried the confusion and lack of communication.
Renard Johnson, Mayor of El Paso, Texas: I want to be very, very clear that this should have never happened. You cannot restrict airspace over a major city without coordinating with the city, the airport, the hospitals, the community leadership. That failure to communicate is unacceptable.
William Brangham:
So, for more on the many questions around this, we are joined again by Juliette Kayyem. She's the faculty director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Homeland Security Project and was an assistant DHS secretary during the Obama administration.
Juliette, welcome back.
Just let's go through this ticktock one more time. The FAA says we're going to close the airport for 10 days, then reverses it. The administration says this was Mexican cartel drones, but others report that this was likely a Pentagon test that spooked those officials.
Meanwhile, locals on the ground are saying, what on earth is going on? What are we to make of all of this?
Juliette Kayyem, Former U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary: Right. It's not good, just from a communication standpoint, because we're talking about commercial aviation space, passengers in the air, and a lack of coordination and confusion, at best.
So, basically, the notice goes out by the FAA last night. People like me see it and go -- I cannot describe how unique this is. No notice just comes out of nowhere, and it's a 10-day no flight. So just to give comparison, when we bombed in Venezuela, that was a one-day no flight, so just to give you a comparison.
So no one knows what's coming. There's silence. Then there's a false story -- that's the best way of putting it -- about Mexican cartels and drones. To give your audience a perspective, according to NORAD, the military division, thousands of drone excursions happen between Mexico and us monthly.
So there's nothing new about sort of a drone excursion. We then get to I think the explanation that makes a lot of sense, which is -- or at least makes -- is understandable. It doesn't make a lot of sense, which is the Pentagon has been trying out what's called high-energy laser technology.
You just envision very powerful electricity that has come through a laser. The public does not know exactly the capacity of this technology, but it's suspected that it could probably bring down a commercial airplane. They're testing it out at Fort Bliss nearby.
And perhaps they tested it out prematurely. The FAA gets nervous, says we don't know what's going on in the sky and makes a sweeping judgment. So everything we heard from the administration was essentially not accurate.
William Brangham:
So is the FAA,in your view, in the right here? Because if they suddenly felt that there was the potential for these high-electricity lasers shooting through the airspace where commercial flights might be going, maybe they were right to ground this and that they were kind of caught off guard here.
Juliette Kayyem:
Yes. I think that's right.
I think the Defense Department, if they utilized this technology without notice to the FAA earlier this week, where there's some reporting that that is true, it's -- I don't use the word outrageous, but you don't mess around with commercial aviation space.
We saw what happened in January of 2025 when the airline regional jet and Black Hawk helicopter crashed; 67 people died. There were new security rules put in place. Those got unwound recently. And there's been a little bit of a fight between DOD and the FAA about communication and clarity.
It's a fight that needs to get resolved. The FAA, stuck with this new technology near a major -- a major airport near the Mexican border, basically made the sweeping decision. They should have told the White House. They should have told the Department of Defense.
But from our -- from all reporting, they just simply didn't know what the Defense Department's plans were in terms of use or testing. And, as I said earlier, you don't mess around with commercial aviation space. Maybe the FAA did this to get people's attention, which they did.
It's the Pentagon's responsibility to make sure they do not use technology that in any way puts at risk commercial aviation.
William Brangham:
Right. I think we could certainly all agree on that.
Again, on what the FAA did vis-a-vis the local officials, Representative Escobar, who represents El Paso, said she'd heard nothing officially about this. The mayor, we heard, said nobody gave them a heads-up. They had to divert emergency hospital flights to a city 45 minutes away.
Isn't there a protocol for the FAA to alert local officials to do this?
Juliette Kayyem:
Yes, and the airlines. I mean, the airlines literally were caught sort of having to divert. We heard from the mayor that there were medical aviation that were coming in that had to be diverted, so people's health care was put at risk.
There is a whole protocol. Every airport -- I was part of this. Every airport has local, state, federal, every federal alphabet soup, the private sector, the airlines, all who meet every morning and discuss what is going on.
So, as I said, the FAA, their hands aren't clean here. They probably made the right decision, but they should have notified the localities and the airlines before this happened. The protocols are in fact there. And it's part of this idea, I think, coming, that there's like no homeland for this administration, that the federal agencies work without -- or do things without coordination with state, locals, governors and mayors, or Mexico.
William Brangham:
Right.
Juliette Kayyem, thanks for helping us wade through a very confusing day. Appreciate it.
Juliette Kayyem:
Yes, thank you.
Border Officials Are Said to Have Caused El Paso Closure by Firing Anti-Drone Laser
Karoun DemirjianEric SchmittKate KellyHamed Aleaziz and Luke Broadwater
Reporting from Washington
The abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.
The episode led the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly declare that the nearby airspace would be shut down for 10 days, an extraordinary pause that was quickly lifted Wednesday morning at the direction of the White House.
Top administration officials quickly claimed that the closure was in response to a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels that required a military response, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declaring in a social media post that “the threat has been neutralized.”
But that assertion was undercut by multiple people familiar with the situation, who said that the F.A.A.’s extreme move came after immigration officials earlier this week used an anti-drone laser shared by the Pentagon without coordination with the F.A.A. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
C.B.P. officials thought they were firing on a cartel drone, the people said, but it turned out to be a party balloon. Defense Department officials were present during the incident, one person said.
The Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The F.A.A. declined to comment.
The military has been developing high-energy laser technology to intercept and destroy drones, which the Trump administration has said are being used by Mexican cartels to track Border Patrol agents and smuggle drugs into the United States.
The airspace closure provoked a significant backlash from local officials and sharp questions by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including some Republicans, who expressed skepticism about the administration’s version of the events.
“At this point, the details of what exactly occurred over El Paso are unclear,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the aviation agency, told reporters Wednesday after attending a closed-door briefing with Bryan Bedford, the F.A.A. administrator.
Mr. Cruz and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, both said they wanted a classified briefing on the incident from the F.A.A. and the Defense Department.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, also rejected the administration’s explanations.
“A ten-day shutdown of a major U.S. air corridor is an extraordinary step that demands a clear and consistent explanation,” Mr. Reed said in a statement. “The conflicting accounts coming from different parts of the federal government only deepen public concern and raise serious questions about coordination and decision-making.”
According to four people briefed on the situation, Pentagon and F.A.A. officials were set to meet on Feb. 20 to discuss the safety implications of deploying the military’s new anti-drone technology, which was being tested. But the F.A.A.’s urgency intensified after C.B.P. officials deployed the technology.
It was not clear if that incident alone prompted the F.A.A.’s decision to close the airspace over El Paso. F.A.A. officials did not respond to questions about the claims by Mr. Duffy and other administration officials that a subsequent drone incursion had necessitated the closure of the airspace starting at 11:30 p.m. local time. A Transportation Department spokesman did not respond to inquiries about whether a party balloon had been fired upon this week.
But according to the people briefed on the matter, at the time F.A.A. officials closed the airspace, the agency had not yet completed a safety assessment of the risks the new technology could pose to other aircraft. Two of the people added that F.A.A. officials had warned the Pentagon that if they were not given sufficient time and information to conduct their review, they would have no choice but to shut down the nearby airspace.
The F.A.A.’s initial closure announcement late Tuesday, which cited “special security reasons,” barred all aircraft from flying in the area around El Paso below 18,000 feet for 10 days — until one day after the Feb. 20 meeting had been scheduled to take place.
They did not alert the White House or the Pentagon ahead of time that they were shutting down the airspace, a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The move also blindsided El Paso officials.
“I want to be very, very clear that this should’ve never happened,” Mayor Renard Johnson of El Paso said in a news conference Wednesday morning. “You cannot restrict airspace over a major city without coordinating with the city, the airport, the hospitals, the community leadership.”
“That failure to communicate is unacceptable,” he added.
Federal agencies largely stayed mum on the controversy, even in its aftermath. Mr. Bedford, the agency’s administrator, declined to answer reporters’ questions following a closed-door briefing with senators at the Capitol Wednesday evening. Earlier Wednesday, a Pentagon spokesman repeated the military’s assertion that it had responded to a drone incursion.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address the dispute, challenged the claim of a failure of communication, saying that the Pentagon and the Department of Transportation had been coordinating with the aviation agency for months and that it had been assured that there was no threat to commercial air travel.
The official also said this was not the first time that cartel drones at the border had been disabled by military and immigration enforcement personnel acting jointly, describing their roles as two parts of an “ongoing interagency operation.”
The Trump administration has been vocal about its plans to fight Mexican drug cartels and neutralize the drones some are using as part of their operations, even as Mexico’s leaders reject claims that they have been involved in cross-border incursions.
“There is no information about the use of drones at the border,” President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said in a morning news conference, shortly after news broke about the temporary closure of the El Paso airspace.
In July, Steven Willoughby, deputy director of the counter-drone program at the Homeland Security Department, testified before Congress that 27,000 drones had flown within 500 meters of the border over six months in 2024, piloted by organizations hostile to law enforcement.
Those drones can cause major disruptions to American infrastructure, Mr. Willoughby said, adding that his program works with the F.A.A. “to properly coordinate the use of each piece of equipment at specific locations and times to ensure that impacts to the national airspace system are minimized.”
The day after Mr. Willoughby’s testimony, Ms. Sheinbaum disputed his assertion, saying in a news conference that Mexican officials had observed the cartels using drones against one another inside Mexican territory, but not at the border. Speaking at the same news conference in July, Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, Mexico’s navy secretary, insisted that the cartels’ drones “have not been detected at the border.”
In the United States, where many officials accept cartel drone incursions as established fact, some wondered why this particular incident would have prompted such an uncommonly sweeping response from the F.A.A.
“There have been drone incursions from Mexico going back to as long as drones existed,” Representative Veronica Escobar, the Texas Democrat representing El Paso in Congress, said at a news conference. “This is not unusual, and there was nothing extraordinary about any drone incursion into the U.S. that I’m aware of.”
In general, the F.A.A. goes to great lengths to avoid closing airports to traffic, because unplanned closures, even when they happen for just a few hours, can wreak havoc on air travel. Even in a high-risk security situation, F.A.A. airspace closures are usually limited.
On Jan. 3, for example, when the U.S. military captured Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, and his wife, the F.A.A. issued emergency orders barring U.S. flights from operating in the region around Venezuela and closing U.S.-controlled airspace in other parts of the Caribbean for only 24 hours.
The Latest on the Trump Administration
El Paso: The abrupt, and ultimately short-lived, closure of the city’s airspace was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.
U.S. Attorney Fired: Federal judges in upstate New York appointed a new U.S. attorney after the Trump administration’s nominee was found to be serving unlawfully, only to see him abruptly fired by the White House.
Trump Tax Cuts: The tax law passed in Congress, which revived a slew of expensive tax breaks for both business and individuals, is hitting state revenues and prompting some states to proactively exclude the new federal tax cuts from their tax codes.
Lost Factory Jobs: Ford Motor shut down a battery factory and laid off 1,600 workers after President Trump and Republicans gutted government support for electric vehicles. Yet few people in Hardin County, where Trump won 64 percent of the vote in 2024, place much blame on Republicans.
Foreign Military Chiefs: Dozens of military chiefs from the Western Hemisphere gathered in Washington for the first time to discuss a wide range of security issues that the Trump administration says are paramount to safeguarding the United States.
Kennedy Changes Course: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, is making a calculated election-year pivot away from vaccines, using high profile events to promote his “Eat Real Food” agenda.
Nuclear Waste: After years of missed deadlines, New Mexico is demanding that the Energy Department expedite the cleanup of so-called legacy nuclear and hazardous waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
Aishvarya Kavi, Edgar Sandoval, Jack Nicas, Minho Kim and J. David Goodman contributed reporting.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
Kate Kelly covers money, policy and influence for The Times.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Critics Question Closure of El Paso’s Airspace.
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