Earlier this week, a task force consisting of Texas Rangers and state troopers “invaded” the 170-acre Fronton Island, which sits in the Rio Grande opposite the village of Fronton, Texas, about 250 miles downriver from El Paso. The officially uninhabited island has been allowed to become a no-man’s land for decades as both the U.S. and Mexico opted not to claim it. This neglect has enabled cartels to move in and seize the island for their own purposes, which include using it as an illegal drug stash and hideout from authorities of either country.
The island is used by two cartels: the Gulf Cartel and Cartel del Noreste. The two fight among themselves but also are quick to fire on anyone else approaching the island, and numerous skirmishes have occurred over the years.
Jaeson Jones, a retired captain in Texas’s Department of Public Safety who has a long history with the island, told reporter Todd Bensman, “It’s an island of death.”
Before this week’s action, the state of Texas completed a survey concluding that the island was part of Texas, legally permitting authorities to move in and begin a deforestation campaign to rid it of the overgrown vegetation that provides the cartels cover. The incursion is the first step in the gradual occupation of the island. A vanguard group remained behind to oversee the takeover. According to Bensman, writing for the British Daily Mail tabloid:
These vanguards will secure the island to allow for Texas National Guard engineers to safely bring in bulldozers and heavy machinery to completely denude the landscape of trees and brush before they fortify it with concertina wire.
In the future, Texas authorities will patrol the island like a war zone. Bensman concludes:
And whether or not Texas or federal government want to admit it, the border with Mexico has now been militarized for the first-time against foreign criminal organizations. And this war has just begun.