On Wednesday, Manchester United The states’ Customs and Border Protection confirmed to 404 media that it has been flying predator drones in Los Angeles during the Los Angeles protests. “Military drones are in the Greater Los Angeles area’s federal law enforcement partners, including immigration and customs enforcement, and with air support from their operations,” the CBP statement said.
State-level law enforcement agencies across the United States use various types of drones and other vehicles (such as helicopters) for aviation surveillance, while other agencies use drones in their operations. For example, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom, California’s forestry and fire department “doubled the use of drones” this year, as part of an effort to combat forest fires. However, CBP’s MQ-9 harvester drone (also known as the Predator B drone) is a military caliber drone used for armed aviation reconnaissance.
In 2020, in Donald Trump’s first administration, the CBP flew a Predator drone during the George Floyd protests. And, in the following years, researchers tracked the Department of Homeland Security’s predator drones flying across U.S. cities without a clear explanation. As far as Los Angeles is concerned, Trump has deployed more than 700 active-duty Marines, and nearly 4,000 guards from the Federal National Guard have sent Newsom’s opposition. Combining these actions, the presence of CBP drones depicts images of growing federal participation and possible control, often typical of these situations.
“Military equipment has been used for domestic law enforcement for a long time, but Los Angeles’ military equipment is worth noting when the president sends military forces against the governor’s wishes,” said Matthew Feeney, the eldest brother of the British Civil Liberties Group of Nonpartisan UK. “If the federal government portrays immigration as a national security issue, we wouldn’t be surprised if the national security tools (IE, military hardware) were used publicly.”
The Predator drone carries powerful cameras and other sensors that can record clear, detailed footage of events such as protests at high altitudes.
CBP’s “Air and Ocean Business (AMO) is providing air support to federal law enforcement partners in the Greater Los Angeles area,” the CBP told Wired in a statement to answer questions about whether Operation Los Angeles is a routine or anomaly. “AMO’s efforts focus on situational awareness and official safety support.”
“The more protests spread to other cities, the more surveillance we will see,” warned Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute.
The CBP told 404 media this week that “AMO is not surveillance of First Amendment activities.” The statement is consistent with the December 2015 DHS commitment. “The data recorded by the UAV system should not be for the purpose of surveillance activities solely for the purpose of surveillance activities, such as the religion, speech, speech, remarks, echoes, media and civilizations, protests, protests, protests, protests, protests, “the UAV system task force” wrote at the time.
But, in reality, it is not clear how predators’ surveillance “supports” ice and other federal law enforcement without surveillance and capturing the image of protesters.
Although the researchers point out that using Predator drones on LA is not unprecedented, and at this point, perhaps unsurprisingly, they stress that over time, this pattern of activity will only make the federal government more likely to do such surveillance in the future, regardless of how the state handles this situation.
“It’s not new, not even an accident for everyone, but it’s still a horrible use of military technology for the civilian population,” said Drone researcher Faine Greenwood. “It’s basically a trend that continues to be a worrying one, but people should also be angry about it and refuse to normalize it.”
