Mexican authorities discover 24 drug cartel surveillance cameras in a town on the Arizona border

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican authorities said Friday that they discovered and seized 24 drug cartel surveillance cameras mounted on telephone and light poles in the Colorado border town of San Luis Rio.

The city on the Arizona border has suffered for years from violence between drug cartels fighting for control of the border crossing where they can smuggle drugs.

Prosecutors in the northern state of Sonora said the cameras were planted there by “hawks,” the name commonly used in Mexico for drug cartel scouts who want to keep an eye on the movements of soldiers and police.

Army troops removed the devices and photos indicated they were ordinary porch cameras wrapped in tape. They were found in three different neighborhoods and some were even attached to palm trees.

San Luis Rio Colorado, located across from Yuma, Arizona, is best known as a border town where Americans can get affordable prescriptions and dental care. But it is increasingly plagued by drug cartel violence.

It is not the first border town where cartels have installed their own surveillance networks.

In 2015, a drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas deployed at least 39 surveillance cameras to monitor the comings and goings of authorities in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

The cameras were powered by power lines above city streets and accessed the Internet via telephone wires along the same poles. They were equipped with modems and could be operated wirelessly or over commercial providers' lines.

Some of the cameras were aimed at a military base, while others captured movement outside a Marine post, attorney general and state police offices, as well as shopping centers, major highways and some neighborhoods.

During 2015, authorities also discovered 55 radio antennas between the nearby border towns of Matamoros and Miguel Aleman.

The Associated Press