Federal Aviation Administration officials were forced to close El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday after the Defense Department decided to use new anti-drone technology without giving aviation officials ample time to assess the risks to commercial airlines, according to four people briefed on the situation.
Those accounts, offered on the condition of anonymity because the officials were not authorized to comment publicly, challenge the official explanation from the Trump administration. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, along with representatives for the White House and the Pentagon, insisted on Wednesday that a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels had necessitated a military response, which prompted the F.A.A. to close the airspace.
The military has been developing high-energy laser technology to intercept and destroy drones, which the Trump administration has said are used by Mexican cartels to track Border Patrol agents and smuggle drugs into the United States. According to the people briefed on the situation, El Paso’s airspace was shut down when the Defense Department, operating out of Fort Bliss, a nearby Army base, decided to mobilize that new technology over the F.A.A.’s objections.
According to two of the people briefed on the situation, military officials deployed that technology earlier this week against what they thought was a cartel drone, but which turned out to be a party balloon. That operation was carried out without proper coordination with the F.A.A., the people said.
It was not clear if that incident alone prompted the F.A.A.’s decision to close the airspace over El Paso, and F.A.A. officials did not respond to questions about whether they agreed with the claims from 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.
But according to the four 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.
Aviation and military officials had planned to meet on Feb. 20 to discuss the potential implications, three of the people said. But when the military decided to act sooner, without moving up that meeting, F.A.A. officials responded by imposing a rare, 10-day closure of the surrounding airspace up to 18,000 feet, out of concern for the safety of other aircraft in the region, citing “special security reasons.”
The move left El Paso officials blindsided.
“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. The F.A.A. did not respond to requests for comment about the circumstances that led to the airspace closure, a Transportation Department spokesman declined to comment and 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.
When asked about the Trump administration’s claims that a Mexican cartel drone incursion into the United States caused the airspace closure, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said that “there is no information about the use of drones at the border.” The F.A.A.’s original notice said that the closure would not affect Mexican airspace.
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.
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.”
On Wednesday, many officials questioned why a particular drone incursion would have prompted such a 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.”
Even some of the Trump administration’s closest allies on Capitol Hill were reserving judgment.
In a statement on social media, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the committee that oversees aviation, said he was working to “gather more information about this morning’s temporary airspace closure in El Paso,” and was “hopeful more details can be publicly shared in the coming days on interagency coordination.”
The F.A.A. and the Transportation Department did not offer an explanation as to why the airspace over El Paso was initially closed for 10 days. That is far longer than closures that are typical for any individual drone incursion, and not a standard length of time for an F.A.A. closure, according to people familiar with the protocols.
In general, the F.A.A. goes to great lengths to avoid closing airports to traffic, as 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.
Luke Broadwater, Aishvarya Kavi, Edgar Sandoval, Jack Nicas and J. David Goodman contributed reporting.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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