WASHINGTON (TNND) — Mexico’s pledge to send 10,000 troops to the border comes as those on this side of the border are facing new threats.

The New York Post reported Monday on an internal memo warning, “Mexican cartel leaders have authorized the deployment of drones equipped with explosives to be used against US Border Patrol agents and US military personnel.”

In an interview with The National News Desk Tuesday, John Fabbricatore, former ICE Field Office Director said, "They’re gonna try to do what they can to make these situations where the border patrol gets in trouble. Border Patrol agents are hurt. They’re responding to other situations so they can then get their smuggled goods across the border, and continue human smuggling human trafficking sex trafficking whatever their profit source is," he said.

In other words, it's largely a strategy of diversion and part of an aggressive response to a significant loss in profits that smuggling groups have experienced in recent weeks.

A House Homeland Security Report published in 2023, detailed how the profits grew rapidly while President Biden was in office, with a more lenient policy of letting migrants who arrived at the border remain in the country.

In turn, there was a rapid rise of migrants from around the world wanting assistance getting to the U.S. border, with at least 80% of those coming, doing so with the help of smugglers they paid.

In turn, it's estimated cartels made about $13 billion a year on human smuggling alone.

They became so emboldened, that they built and used tunnels to easily travel back and forth between Mexico and the United States.

Last month, some of those tunnels were discovered in El Paso Texas.

During a Jan. 11 news conference, Claudio Herrera, a spokesman for U.S. Border Patrol said, “That tunnel goes from Ciudad Juarez to here in the El Paso Sector."

The warnings about drone attacks could bring more urgency for the U.S. military to assist in border security efforts.

“The military has ground penetrating radar. They’ve got other things that they’ve been using over in Afghanistan to discover tunnels in Afghanistan, that can be used on the border. The military also has technology to knock drones out of air out of the air and hunt drones," Fabbricatore said.

While the threat may have grown, the White House is touting its border measures are helping to secure the country.

Since Donald Trump took office just a little more than two weeks ago and declared an emergency at the southern border, the number of encounters appears to have dropped dramatically, from between 1,200 and 1,400 per day during the final days of the Biden Administration to between 600 and 700 a day more recently.