Just before 9 pm on Wednesday, January 21, I landed at the British Airways terminal at London's Heathrow Airport. I was flying in from Cairo for what was my fourth visit since I left the US. I was headed to Birmingham. It hadn't even been a year since I had been forced to leave the United States after sustained political pressure connected to my activism in support of Palestine.
Texas Republicans have been wary of unmanned aerial vehicles, with some even backing proposed laws to allow the citizenry to gun down invasive airborne drones. Now, thanks to years of Operation Lone Star, Governor Abbott's multi-billion dollar border mission, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is ushering in what might fairly be called the Drone Star State with an expansive fleet of flying eyes in the sky.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, SENASICA reported that the infected animal- an 8-month-old cow-had recently been moved to a certified feedlot in Nuevo León from a region in southern Mexico with known active NWS cases. In addition to the proximity, the USDA highlighted that "Sabinas Hidalgo is located near the major highway from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, to Laredo, Texas, which is one of the most heavily trafficked commercial thoroughfares in the world."
Inside a windowless and dark shipping container turned into a high-tech surveillance command center, two analysts peered at their own set of six screens that showed data coming in from an MQ-9 Predator B drone. Both were looking for two adults and a child who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and had fled when a Border Patrol agent approached in a truck.
"It is an one-on-one nutshell education about the reality of all the surveillance along the U.S.-Mexico border, how it functions, what type of equipment is there and how it's impacting real people's lives at the border," said Matthew Guariglia."