US officials have urged those in the agriculture industry near the southern border to be cautious after a Texas rancher checking on a property on the Mexico side was killed when he drove over a suspected drug cartel improvised explosive device.
“This shocking act of violence highlights the growing threat posed by cartel activity along our southern border,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement on Tuesday.
“I urge all Texas farmers, ranchers, and agricultural workers who travel to Mexico or operate near the border to exercise extreme caution.”
Rancher Antonio Céspedes Saldierna, 74, was visiting his ranch in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, near Brownsville, Texas, when he hit the device in his truck, killing him and a companion, Horacio Lopez Peña, and injuring a third person in the vehicle, Lopez’s wife Ninfa Griselda Ortega.
“I’m sad, I’m confused, I’m in shock,” the rancher’s son Ramiro Céspedes told KRGV this month.
Céspedes, an Army veteran, said the explosion looked like something out of his missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I consider this a terrorist attack because if I went to war to fight terrorists, and I’m seeing the same thing here to me – my personal opinion – it is a terrorist attack,” he added.
Last month, the state of Tamaulipas warned of explosives left behind in cartel turf wars.
“Armed confrontations between organized crime groups have left explosive substances and materials on agricultural roads, holes and fields that represent a latent risk to the people,” it wrote in Spanish on a government Facebook page.
The U.S. Consulate in Mexico reportedly issued a “Do Not Travel” advisory for the state in January in response to cartel violence, which specifically cited leftover explosives and urged travelers to avoid dirt roads and remote areas.
The Trump administration has been pushing to take a more military-style approach to cracking down on Mexican drug cartels, designating six major outfits as foreign terror groups.
It has also surged troops to the border and declared a national immigration emergency.
