Border Patrol Launched a Surveillance Blimp Over Nogales, Arizona. Town Officials Didn't Know.
Residents of Nogales are now under the gaze of a round-the-clock surveillance craft.
![A surveillance blimp floats over the U.S.-Mexico border A surveillance blimp floats over the U.S.-Mexico border | Illustration: Lex Villena; Gene Zhang, David Ryder/ZUMA Press/Newscom](https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/c800x450-w800-q80/uploads/2022/07/U.S.-Mexico-blimp-800x450.jpg)
Last week, residents of Nogales, Arizona—a border-hugging town of about 20,000 people—awoke to find a large white blimp stationed in the sky. Even elected officials had no idea the blimp was coming. "What the hell?" Mayor Arturo Garino told Nogales International. "Did it land here by mistake?"
The blimp, it turns out, is conducting around-the-clock surveillance on behalf of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which launched the craft last Thursday. The CBP issued a press release on the project just one day prior, noting that the blimp would be "operational and manned by Border Patrol Agents 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to provide continuous aerial surveillance of the border." By the time the official CBP announcement came out, some Nogales residents had already noticed the blimp beginning to be inflated.
Many residents and local officials are concerned about the lack of advance warning, not to mention the harmful effects the blimp might have on people's privacy.
"The blimp is the Border Patrol," says Edward Dickie, city manager of Nogales. It "has nothing to do with the city at all. In fact, we weren't aware that they were going to put it up."
The blimp's staging area is stationed on a hill near Nogales' East Patagonia Highway, just a quarter-mile from a residential neighborhood. Tethered approximately one mile away from the U.S.-Mexico border, residents under the blimp's gaze have questions about the craft's activities. "I don't know what they're surveilling," Rafael Lopez, who lives roughly a half-mile from where the blimp is floating, told Nogales International. "I don't know what type of instruments they have on there and what they can see."
Federal immigration authorities have been mum about what the blimp is watching. They have offered a vague reference to "border activity," and they later stated the craft would not be oriented toward activities "outside the immediate areas of the border." With the ability to provide surveillance both night and day, and a maximum range of 3,000 feet above the ground, the blimp is certainly capable of snooping on many people.
"I think it's evidence of a kind of growing police state along the border," Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway told Nogales International. "It just seems weird and dystopian to have that kind of surveillance platform right in the middle of the city."
The office of Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D–Ariz.), whose district includes Nogales, declared in an emailed statement that we "urgently need transparency and oversight with these invasive border surveillance technologies."
Nogales is already heavily monitored, with a combination of local, state, and federal authorities active on the ground. Local officials questioned how the blimp would benefit those existing efforts, given that it's stationed over the already heavily surveilled highway area rather than a remote stretch of town. Other critics, such as Grijalva, cite research that indicates the expansion of border surveillance technologies has been accompanied by an increased death rate among migrants crossing the border. Three Tucson-based researchers have noted that increased surveillance "simply shifted migration routes into much more difficult and remote terrain."
There are now 17 blimps stationed over the U.S.-Mexico border. The Nogales blimp is the first in eastern Arizona, though the CBP tentatively plans to launch another in that sector later this year.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Wonder if Biden suspending BP agents wothout pay who were cleared of all wrong doing over the whipping controversy will get a mention here.
I doubt it; they were white, weren’t they?
I actually have made $18k within a calendar month via working easy jobs from a laptop. As I had lost my last business, I was so upset and thank God I searched this simple job (phy-06) achieving this I’m ready to achieve thousand of dollars just from my home. All of you can certainly join this best job and could collect extra money on-line visiting this site.
>>>>>>>>>> http://getjobs49.tk
Hey, if you’re not doing anything wrong you got nothing to worry about.
Start now incomes each week extra than $7,000 to 8,000 through doing quite simple and smooth domestic primarily based totally task on-line. Last month I’ve made $32,735 through doing this on-line task simply in my component time for handiest 2 hrs. an afternoon the usage of my laptop. (res-12) This task is simply wonderful and smooth to do in component time. Start incomes extra greenbacks on-line simply through follow:-
.
commands here:☛☛☛ https://yourjobs85.blogspot.com/
What?! This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!!!!!! If this Orwellian monstrosity results in even one Brown body not making it to the US to provide cost-effective labor for Reason.com’s billionaire benefactor Charles Koch ……… [takes deep breath]
Well, if that happens it will be the most devastating blow to the open borders agenda since those horse-mounted Border Patrol agents literally whipped innocent migrants like they were runaway slaves. 🙁
#InDefenseOfBillionaires
#CheapLaborAboveAll
OBL, you’re a national treasure. Please do not change. Just read your post and almost spit up coffee laughing so hard.
lol, thanks for the 1st laugh of the morning
[takes deep breath] was gold, Jerry. Gold!
I thought this was the more responsible alternative to building a wall.
No?
So in 2006, GWB started a program managed by Boeing that Obama eventually cancelled because Boeing is such a bunch of fuckups, called the secure border initiative.
It’s plan was to build 100 foot towers on the southern border in lieu of a wall. On each tower would be a variety of cameras, IR sensors, radars etc. There would also be seismometers tuned to the pattern of feet.
If border crossers were seen, the border patrol would be alerted.
It was claimed it would be more effective than a wall and even more environmentally sound. At the time there was a jaguar that would cross from Mexica into Arizona and vice-versa and this would let jaguars and other desert animals through where the wall would not.
It was in many ways, a pretty good idea, but then Boeing got a hold of it and grifted it into the ground.
I hope the author takes fentanyl tainted party drugs
“operational and manned by Border Patrol Agents 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to provide continuous aerial surveillance of the border.”
There are agents INSIDE that thing?
Zeppelins have a cabin below. Remember the Hindenburg?
Of course, this will be e-monitored.
This is a blimp (Class B limp airship) A Zeppelin (more commonly called a dirigible in the US) has a rigid frame for the upper part that holds the gas bags.
You’re saying the upper part has a rigid frame for holding Congress?
No, a dirigible requires light gasses, not super heavy gasses. 🙂
Inert gas bags
Rigid Frame was my nickname back at the public swimming pool.
MANNED?
How sexist can you be?
No, it’s a tethered aerostat – writers don’t know anything – with a manned ground station.
It’s just a big balloon holding instruments and the crew are in a trailer on the ground underneath – there’s a cable running data up the tether.
Times have changed. I grew up in that… quadrant of the country. I’m surprised that thing hasn’t been taken down by a half dozen kids with Ruger 10/22s.
They balloons are high enough to not even be a temptation.
The article said it would be floating at “a maximum range of 3,000 feet above ground.” Probably out of range for a 10/22, but certainly not out of range for .30 cal. rifle. Especially considering the target is literally the size of a barn.
Biden’s response to Trump’s wall was to instead build something full of hot air.
I would have enjoyed Chumby’s take on this.
Yes! Where is Chumby?
This seems a bit hyperbolic. I used to go down to Sierra Vista, AZ, not too far from Nogales and there was a blimp somewhere in the area the whole time. That would have been 2016 or so.
So yeah, they should have notified the locals, but on a clear day, they probably saw the one I saw from Nogales, it shouldn’t have been much of a mystery.
I was always much more concerned about the vehicle search driving north towards the highway. If you want to get worked up about something, that’s a better target.
The blimp still flies over Sierra Vista, and the Border Patrol still has a station north of town (but not always stopping cars).
Did it work?
Someone should launch a second blimp to watch the CPB agents.
Since the Biden administration has refused to enforce federal laws banning illegal immigration, seems like spending hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars on 17 surveillance blimps is just another waste of tax dollars.
The DEA & DOD deployed a cordon of Distant Early Warning blimps, and aerostat radar platforms from the Bahamas to the islands of the Western Caribbean long before drones were a thing. The main object of the Mexican extension is also un-announced aircraft and boats incoming, not eavesdropping on border town residents.
The War on Drugs/Immigration is an endless escalation of authoritarian tactics that serve mainly to deprive citizens of their rights.
But I am sure this time will be different.
Citizens?
If a guy with a dick can claim to be a woman, then a bunch of illegals from Honduras can claim to be Americas. I bet Jeff is OK with both.
Yeah, a lot of the people getting searched are citizens. Most of the people who want to employ foreign-born workers are citizens.
CITIZENS GET SEARCHED? Surely this never happens anywhere else but the southern border
You think this will only be used to look for illegals?
It seems that blimplets can now loiter longer and at lower cost that heavier than air drones
“Other critics, such as Grijalva, cite research that indicates the expansion of border surveillance technologies has been accompanied by an increased death rate among migrants crossing the border.”
Just like locked doors, security glass, alarms, barbed wire, and guard dogs have increased injuries and deaths among burglars. So we should take them down.
Fuck Grijalva.
Um, I’m sort of spitballing here, but these things aren’t usually manned. The tethered blimp is likely carrying a sensor or two (e.g., radar, camera) and is monitored by a ground station.
To say it has “a range of 3000 feet above the ground” is indicative of the vacuousness of modern journalism. It’s altitude could be up to 3000 feet above the ground, thus it could surveil a large radius, certainly in excess of 10 miles, probably more.
What caliber for blimp?
Most any, but incendiaries are a lot of fun – – – – –
(yeah, yeah, I know, but the fantasy is more fun)
A nice shoot down would get the Pelosi’s Personal Persecution Posse off the front page for a day or two.
It’s over Mexico – is it full of candy like a piñata?
Maybe full of Fentanyl? Disguised as a clone to ICE blimps for safe deliveries?
I reckon anything with a 29 mm rocket engine would work just fine.
It would seem to be a Goodyear for the surveillance state.
Nicely done.
Cry me a river, Mayor. You were all in on illegal immigration and denigrating the Border Patrol last week. Now that they are doing something to address the problem people of your ilk created it’s beyond galling to hear you caterwauling about it. BTW: didn’t you just endorse a pro amnesty guy running for governor? You think illegals don’t know what will happen if they jump the fence and so are flocking in because Brandon is shipping them all over the country?
OMZ, THEY COULD LITERALLY SEE IT BEING INFLATED WHEN YHE ANNOUNCEMENT WAS MADE!!!!!
Time to build a radio controlled Sopwith Camel and outfit it with a BB machine gun.
Oh sorry, not radio controlled, a drone, I meant a drone cuz drones are way cooler than old fashioned radio controlled.
Detain, deport, deter. No one is entitled to emigrate to another country.
You cheap labor shill are nauseating.
These blimps have been used for years along the border. In other words folks, chill.
I remember seeing these 30yrs ago so you are right.
What’s the matter, Fiona — running short on gardeners and maids? Nogales doesn’t own the airspace overhead; nobody needs their permission. But a blimp overhead, OMFG. I guess I was supposed to run and hide under the bed every time the Goodyear blimp was over Los Angeles for a football game.
Don’t think you’d need a blimp to see tens of thousands of law breakers at the border.