The aircraft, which are being deployed out of Fort Huachuca and Gila Bend, Arizona, can watch over a target for 24 hours at a time and fly for hundreds of miles. They are the latest example of the military-style hardware and techniques to be used on the U.S.-Mexico border.

U.S. officials have argued for the use of these aircraft saying they could be used to police the border for “drug traffickers, illegal immigrants, and terrorists.”

Department of Homeland Security head Thomas Ridge told a congressional committee in May that the drones could be in use by the end of the year to patrol the border. In military operations, drones have been equipped with cameras, sensors, communication equipment, and missiles.

“We need to equip [Border Patrol agents] with this kind of technology if our expectations legitimately are for them to combat terrorism,” Ridge said.

Mario Villarreal, a spokesman of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, told the Reuters news agency that the drones would help beef up the immigration police presence on the border. These aircraft “have played an important role for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said. On November 3 of last year the CIA unleashed a missile attack by a Predator drone on a car traveling through northwestern Yemen, killing all six people inside. U.S. officials labeled the dead men “Al Qaeda operatives.” Washington has also used Predators in Bosnia in the mid-1990s and as part of its bombing assault against Afghanistan two years ago.

In April, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner wrote to President George Bush saying that such drones could be used to “monitor long stretches of border, nuclear power plants, pipelines and dams” as well as to “augment Coast Guard patrols of the U.S. coastline,” CBS News reported.  
 
 
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