AILSA CHANG, HOST:
What happened in the skies over El Paso? That is something that Texans would love to have an answer to, and concrete answers are so far hard to come by.
Here's what we do know. Tuesday night, the Federal Aviation Administration suddenly closed the airspace around El Paso. They said the closure would last 10 days, but less than eight hours later, skies were reopened. A U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly told NPR that the Pentagon permitted Customs and Border Protection to use a laser to shoot down a suspected drug cartel drone. Well, it now appears that object may have been a Mylar party balloon instead, not a drone.
Whatever was happening, it involved multiple federal agencies and caused a whole bunch of chaos for a lot of people in El Paso. And the city's mayor, Renard Johnson, joins us now. Welcome, Mayor.
RENARD JOHNSON: Thank you for having me.
CHANG: Man, a lot has happened to you guys. First of all, I just want to ask you about the airspace restriction. How did that specifically affect El Paso?
JOHNSON: Yeah. So, you know, what ended up happening is most of us here in El Paso woke up that morning and saw the news that there was a temporary flight restriction over our airspace here in El Paso.
CHANG: Yeah.
JOHNSON: It wasn't just for one day. It was for 10 days.
CHANG: Exactly.
JOHNSON: Yeah. And by doing that, it caused an extreme amount of chaos and confusion, where people didn't know what was going on. They didn't know if we were under attack or what was happening in the city. So by that happening, you know - and we didn't have very much information here at the city that we could message out to the city of El Paso. So it created a lot of confusion and chaos here in El Paso, Texas.
CHANG: Well, what communication did you as a mayor receive from the federal government about this whole closure of the airspace? Like, who let you know it was even happening? What did they share with you? Or did you find out about it through the news?
JOHNSON: Yeah. I found out through my city manager who woke me up around 11:30 on Tuesday evening and said, sir, the airport's going to be closed for 10 days. And then she subsequently got some type of information later on and said, you know, the FAA's closing the airspace. I want the listeners to know, Ailsa, that keep in mind that during 9/11, our airport was only closed for two days. And during this event, they were wanting to close us because of a - what's been reported through the media, whether it was a Mylar balloon or whether it was a drone, for upwards to 10 days.
CHANG: Well, at the time that you were told that the airspace would be closed for 10 days, what was your understanding as to why?
JOHNSON: We didn't know, and that's what created the concern and the alarm here. Again, there was no communication from the FAA on why the airspace was going to be closed for that long. So we didn't know, and it was very difficult as city leaders to message that out to the citizens of El Paso.
CHANG: Sure. You don't even know how to frame it at that point.
JOHNSON: No. Again, here in El Paso, we have two major military installations. So to have exercises that go on where they're testing or doing things, we're very comfortable in seeing that happen here in a very large military community. It's unprecedented to know that they were going to shut down our airspace for over 10 days. And the amount of people that were flown here that were going to take off out of El Paso were basically just left here at the airport where they had to fend for themselves. So it was very complex.
CHANG: Wow. How much has the Department of Homeland Security communicated with you personally as the mayor about their programs to counter potential drone activity from drug cartels on your side of the border?
JOHNSON: Yeah. That particular communication, we're very limited to. But the way we were communicating is through our congressional office and through our contacts at the military installation at Fort Bliss. That was where we were gaining our information as a city to know kind of what to do and how to prepare and how to message out to the citizens of El Paso. So we had very limited information coming from any Homeland Security or any agency like that or the FAA. So we were relying on the information we could get...
CHANG: Yeah.
JOHNSON: ...From our congressional folks and as well as our military installation.
CHANG: Well, it's been a very strange week for you, Mayor, and for your whole city.
JOHNSON: Yeah.
CHANG: What questions do you still have about what happened and maybe what's to come?
JOHNSON: Well, I think, you know, there's some that say, you know, maybe we shouldn't be telling a city that we're doing an operation. OK. If that - but I think in order to have mission success, you know, we are part of that process, so you have to communicate with us. You reach out. You at least let me know if I have to get my Emergency Operations Center activated 'cause it created some major chaos. People were not wanting to take their kids to school.
CHANG: Yeah.
JOHNSON: They were packing up cars wanting to leave our city. So we've got to communicate better, and that's all we're asking for.
CHANG: Mayor Renard Johnson of El Paso, Texas, thank you very much for speaking with us today.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
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