Mexican military helicopter lands in Laredo by mistake

By JASON BUCH

STAFF WRITER

Aug. 7, 2011, 12:44PM

 A Mexican military helicopter landed Saturday afternoon at Laredo International Airport by mistake, said a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

 Mucia Dovalina, the uniform public affairs officer for the Laredo Port of Entry, said the helicopter landed about 3 p.m., but she couldn’t share details such as the number of occupants or whether they were armed.

 Dovalina said that, following protocol, CBP officers checked out the helicopter’s occupants, then allowed them to return to Mexico in the aircraft.

 “The only thing that I can tell you is that they did land here,” she said. “It was by mistake. They were processed and they were returned to Mexico.”

According to a statement from CBP, the pilot mistook the airport for a landing strip in Nuevo Laredo.

This is the latest such incursion that officials have called inadvertent as the Mexican military increases troop deployments in northeastern Mexico.

In July, a convoy of soldiers rolled across the international bridge at Donna and were processed by customs and sent back across.

The Mexican military announced last week that it had wrapped up an operation called “Lince Norte,” or Northern Lynx.

The 20-day assault on the Zetas drug trafficking organization used 4,000 Mexican troops, deployed mostly in states bordering Texas.

 The operation resulted in the death of the Zeta who controlled Nuevo Laredo and the arrest of a man the military says is a “national level” financier for the gang.