“Chaos and confusion”: inside the shutdown of El Paso airspace

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Apple News Today
Episode: “Chaos and confusion”: inside the shutdown of El Paso airspace
Date: February 12, 2026
Host: Cecilia Ley (in for Shumita Basu)

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Episode Overview

This episode unpacks the sudden, unexplained shutdown of El Paso, Texas airspace and the ripple effects on the city, federal agencies, and the broader conversation around drone technology and border security. Other key stories include developments on US-Israel-Iran relations, concerning new policies at US immigration detention centers, a tragic school shooting in Canada, the latest US jobs report, and the surprising Olympic journey of a 54-year-old curler.

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Main Story: The El Paso Airspace Shutdown

The Event: Sudden Closure and Chaos

• [00:05–01:14] Cecilia Ley and Renard Johnson report on the abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace Tuesday night, which left travelers, local officials, and aviation personnel confused and scrambling.

  • Notable Quote:

    “This unnecessary decision has caused chaos and confusion in the El Paso community.” — Renard Johnson, El Paso Mayor [00:10]

• [00:54] An exchange between pilots and ground control illustrates the confusion:

  • “So for 10 days you guys are not open? ... No air traffic.” — Airport Ground Control [00:59]

• Impact: El Paso International Airport, vital for Texas, New Mexico, and Northern Mexico, was entirely shut down.

Speculation and Explanations

• [01:30–02:27] Dan Lamoth (Pentagon reporter):

  • The 10-day closure seemed “completely out of pocket” for such a major airport; usually, closures last hours, not days.
  • Notable Quote:

    “The idea that you would restrict it for 10 days was pretty striking...it just struck people as kind of completely out of pocket.” — Dan Lamoth [01:30]

• [01:58–02:27] The Pentagon intended to test laser-based counter-drone technology, reportedly against drones operated by Mexican cartels. The FAA was uncomfortable with safety details and thus restricted airspace.

• [02:50–03:01] In the confusion, the system reportedly shot down “a couple things,” likely Mylar party balloons.

  • Notable Quote:

    “There is reporting that they actually ended up shooting down Mylar party balloons. So not a threat if that's what it was.” — Dan Lamoth [02:50]

Departmental Tensions and Local Fallout

• [03:01–03:39]

  • Aviation officials had warned a shutdown was possible if they couldn’t vet the technology in advance.
  • The FAA, Pentagon, and Customs and Border Protection all acted without fully informing each other, leading to a muddled response.
  • Meeting to discuss the technology had been scheduled for the following week — but the shutdown preempted it.

• Impact on Community: Medical evacuation and emergency flights diverted, all operations halted.

  • Notable Quote:

    "All aviation operations were grounded, including emergency flights. This was a major and unnecessary disruption, one that has not occurred since 9/11." — Renard Johnson, El Paso Mayor [03:16]

Politics and The Bigger Picture

• [03:39–04:18]

  • Rep. Veronica Escobar expressed skepticism about the official narrative, noting drone incursions are routine.

  • The Pentagon seeks more authority to deploy anti-drone systems at sensitive locations (airports, stadiums, border) but risks clashing with civilian aviation needs.

  • Notable Quote:

    "The question is going to be, how do you address this? ... there’s all kinds of places where you would potentially have a concern with these drones.” — Dan Lamoth [04:06]

• [04:18] Sen. Ted Cruz is pushing for a classified briefing to investigate the incident.

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Other Major Stories

US, Israel, and Iran: Geopolitics and Peace Prospects

Diplomatic Jockeying

• [04:18–07:55]

  • Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House as US-Iran indirect talks continue over nuclear programs and military threats.

  • Israel “afraid that the Trump administration could strike a deal” (Sam Metz, AP, [05:16]), especially one not including constraints on Iran’s missile program.

  • Israel pushes new laws tightening control in the West Bank, making settler expansion easier and drawing sharp international condemnation.

    • Notable Quote:

      "It becomes harder to negotiate over a pie while you’re eating it. So it becomes harder to negotiate for a future Palestinian state if there are settlers expanding..." — Sam Metz [06:43]

  • UN and European, Arab League, OIC members criticize the moves as obstacles to peace.

Immigration Detention: Prolonged Detention Amid Policy Shifts

Stories from Detention Facilities

• [07:55–10:35]

  • Prolonged immigration detention increasing in Trump’s second term due to a new policy: immigration judges rarely allowed to release detainees before their cases resolve.

  • Notable Quote:

    "Prolonged detention has become more common in President Donald Trump’s second term, at least in part because a new policy generally prohibits immigration judges from releasing detainees while their deportation cases are still pending in the courts." — Giselle Solomon [08:38]

  • 34-year-old asylum seeker Felipe Hernandez Espinoza described months in harsh conditions—requesting to go home, but officials wouldn’t process his voluntary departure without a hearing.

  • Facilities reported to have unsanitary, unsafe conditions: worms in food, overflowing sewage, insects.

    • Notable Quote:

      "Detainees have reported worms in their food, toilets that don't flush, and overflowing sewage." — Giselle Solomon [10:01]

• Over 70,000 in ICE detention; nearly 8,000 held over six months.

• Appeals court allows detention without bond hearings; many detainees now desperate just for deportation.

Other News in Brief

Tragic Canadian School Shooting

• [11:54–12:18]
  • Six killed (including five students and a teacher) in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia; suspect a former student who died at the scene.
  • PM Mark Carney:

    “All of us in mourning.” [11:54]

US Jobs Report

• [12:18]
  • Strong employment growth (130,000 jobs) in January, led by healthcare and construction.
  • Over 30,000 white-collar jobs lost.

Winter Olympics: The Elder Statesman Curler

• [12:18–End]
  • 54-year-old personal injury lawyer Rich Roonan could become the oldest US Winter Olympian as a curling alternate. Known for his humor and self-awareness.
    • Memorable Detail:

      "… the slip and fall attorney will only get to play if someone, well, slips and falls."

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “This unnecessary decision has caused chaos and confusion in the El Paso community.”
  — Renard Johnson [00:10]

• “It would be one thing to restrict it for a couple hours for a specific reason, but a 10 day period of time ... it just struck people as kind of completely out of pocket.”
  — Dan Lamoth [01:30]

• “There is reporting that they actually ended up shooting down Mylar party balloons. So not a threat if that's what it was.”
  — Dan Lamoth [02:50]

• “All aviation operations were grounded, including emergency flights. This was a major and unnecessary disruption, one that has not occurred since 9/11.”
  — Renard Johnson [03:16]

• "The question is going to be, how do you address this? ... there’s all kinds of places where you would potentially have a concern with these drones.”
  — Dan Lamoth [04:06]

• "Prolonged detention has become more common in President Donald Trump’s second term, at least in part because a new policy generally prohibits immigration judges from releasing detainees while their deportation cases are still pending in the courts."
  — Giselle Solomon [08:38]

• "Detainees have reported worms in their food, toilets that don't flush, and overflowing sewage."
  — Giselle Solomon [10:01]

• "All of us in mourning."
  — Prime Minister Mark Carney [11:54]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• El Paso Airspace Shutdown: 00:05–04:18
• US-Israel-Iran Diplomacy: 04:18–07:55
• Immigration Detention Crisis: 07:55–10:35
• Canada School Shooting: 11:54–12:18
• US Jobs Report & Economy: 12:18
• Olympic Curler Story: 12:18–End

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Tone & Style

Clear, measured, but with emotional resonance—especially in relaying leaders' concern, the confusion among El Paso officials, and the humane focus in the immigration story. Quips and lighter moments (the curler story) keep the flow dynamic.

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Conclusion

The episode offers a vivid, multifaceted look at both breaking news and longer-run issues at the intersection of security, politics, and human experience. The El Paso airspace closure, in particular, serves as a window into bureaucratic tensions, the emerging drone threat landscape, and the chaotic outcomes when coordination fails. The show makes expert use of direct quotes and real voices to ground each story in lived experience.

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For more details and full articles, visit the Apple News app.

Transcript

[Cecilia Ley]

Good morning. Conflicting accounts emerge over the sudden closure of a major city's airspace.

[Renard Johnson]

This unnecessary decision has caused chaos and confusion in the El Paso community.

[Cecilia Ley]

Conditions at ICE facilities leave detainees wanting to return to their country of origin. The Associated Press tells us why they're stuck. And the personal injury lawyer who could become Team USA's oldest ever Winter Olympics compet. It's Thursday, February 12th. I'm Cecilia Ley in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News today. On Tuesday night, out of nowhere, federal officials mysteriously closed a large patch of airspace over El Paso, Texas, bewildering pilots.

[Airport Ground Control]

Okay, ground stop zero six thirty.

[Dan Lamoth]

For how long? Ten days.

[Airport Ground Control]

So you. The airport is totally close apparently. We just got informed about 30 minutes to an hour ago. So for 10 days you guys are not open? Well, we won't be here, but no air traffic. Okay, thanks for that. Heads up.

[Cecilia Ley]

El Paso Airport hosts about three and a half million passengers and serves not only large areas in Texas, but parts of New Mexico and Northern Mexico. Dan Lamoth is a Pentagon reporter for the Washington Post. He told us the sudden decision caught everyone off guard.

[Dan Lamoth]

I think in particular, the idea that you would restrict it for 10 days was pretty striking. It would be one thing to restrict it for a couple hours for a specific reason, but a 10 day period of time, that's a major airport, that's a major city. It just struck people as kind of completely out of pocket.

[Cecilia Ley]

And yet despite the order, airspace opened just a few hours later. This confusion appears to center on government departments at odds with one another.

[Dan Lamoth]

The Pentagon was interested in testing counter drone technology and I think using the counter drone technology, and we're told it was a laser based technology, basically shooting down drones was the idea and FAA was not sufficiently comfortable with how this would work and whether commercial flights would be safe. So when they didn't have the level of detail they wanted, we are told that they then restricted the airspace.

[Cecilia Ley]

The Trump administration didn't address claims of miscommunication publicly. Instead, they said that drones operated by Mexican cartels had breached US Airspace. Multiple outlets reported that the Pentagon gave Customs and Border Protection the green light to use the lasers without coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration. But it's not even clear what they actually hit.

[Dan Lamoth]

They apparently did shoot down a couple things. There is reporting that they actually ended up shooting down Mylar party balloons. So not a threat if that's what it was.

[Cecilia Ley]

Reports suggest aviation officials had warned a closure like this could happen if they weren't given the time to review how laser systems might cause disruptions. And a meeting was in place to discuss the technology next week. El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson criticized the.

[Renard Johnson]

Disruption in his community Medical evacuation flights were forced to divert to Las Cruces. All aviation operations were grounded, including emergency flights. This was a major and unnecessary disruption, one that has not occurred since 9 11.

[Cecilia Ley]

Meanwhile, El Paso's Democratic representative, Veronica Escobar, said she was skeptical of the administration's explanation, suggesting that drone invasions at the border are common in the region for as long as drones have been around. Lamoth told us the Pentagon wants the authority to use counter drone systems for the border and for big events like the upcoming World cup, but as yesterday demonstrated, those systems might run into trouble with routine travel.

[Dan Lamoth]

I think when we look forward, the question is going to be how do you address this? And that comes around airports, around military bases, around stadiums, like there's all kinds of places where you would potentially have a concern with these drones.

[Cecilia Ley]

Texas Senator Ted Cruz said that he will schedule a classified briefing about the temporary closure to figure out more details of the incident. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the White House yesterday as foreign policy watchers searched for signs of movement on two major sustaining a fragile peace in Gaza and looming military action in Iran. Just yesterday, the Pentagon ordered a second aircraft carrier to prepare for Middle east deployment, according to a Wall Street Journal briefing. Recent indirect talks between the US And Iran have focused on further limiting their much diminished nuclear program or faced potential strikes. Israel wants those talks to include limits on Iran's ballistic program. Sam Metz is a reporter for the Associated Press and explained to us the stakes for Israel.

[Sam Metz]

I think Israel has long been concerned about Iran's nuclear capability and was very against the Obama administration's efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. So the Israeli government and Netanyahu likely are somewhat afraid that the Trump administration could strike a deal with Iran.

[Cecilia Ley]

But in the end, Trump stopped short of agreeing to Israel's wish list. There are challenges for Trump when it comes to phase two of the peace plan in Palestine. Before Netanyahu's visit to the US his cabinet passed a number of laws aimed at strengthening Israeli control of the occupied West Bank. The measures expand Israel's authority over land use in sections run by the Palestinian Authority, making it simpler for settlers to coerce Palestinians to cede the land.

[Sam Metz]

People are afraid that these things will make it easier for Israel to tighten its grip and deepen its control on the West Bank. One thing to note is this has been happening anyways. An objective view of what's happening in the west bank is settlements have expanded in recent years under the current administration, but this gives an official stamp to some of the things that we're seeing on the ground.

[Cecilia Ley]

The ceasefire brokered by the US Between Israel and Hamas recognized Palestinians goal of statehood. Trump has said he will not let Israel annex the West Bank.

[Sam Metz]

One thing that diplomats, analysts and politicians say is it becomes harder to negotiate over a pie while you're eating it. So it becomes harder to negotiate for a future Palestinian state if there are settlers expanding on certain parts of the land. Moreover, I think that one of the things Palestinians hope for the west bank is to have a contiguous state. So the more these settlements expand into certain parts of the territory, the harder it is to have a contiguous state.

[Cecilia Ley]

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the new measures dangerous and illegal. Israel's moves have also been met with international outrage. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Israel is circumventing Palestinians control of their destiny.

[Sam Metz]

A bunch of European countries, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, have come down and condemned these moves. Some have called them a violation of international law. Others have said that they obstruct a potential peace process and could inflame tensions in the west bank, which is already a tense place with clashes between settlers and Palestinians.

[Cecilia Ley]

Trump's port of peace is expected to gather in Washington, D.C. next week. It's been reported that the meeting is to raise funds for Gaza's reconstruction. Some US Allies have declined to join over concerns that it will sidestep the UN. Detention facilities holding immigrants across the country have received a lot of attention and scrutiny in Trump's second term. We spoke about one on the show recently, where two migrants died in January. The Associated Press writes that the conditions are forcing some detainees to seek a return to their countries of origin, and yet they find themselves stuck.

[Giselle Solomon]

Prolonged detention has become more common in President Donald Trump's second term, at least in part because a new policy generally prohibits immigration judges from releasing detainees while their deportation cases are still pending in the courts.

[Cecilia Ley]

Giselle Solomon spoke with us about her reporting.

[Giselle Solomon]

At the same time, the courts are backlogged with tens of thousands of cases.

[Cecilia Ley]

As far back as 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that ICE couldn't hold immigrants indefinitely and set the cap at six months. Usually, immigrants who have lived in the US Unlawfully for a certain period of years were eligible for bond hearings. It allowed them to make a case to a judge that they weren't a flight risk and they could contest their deportation order outside of detention. But now the administration has been enforcing what has been referred to as a mandatory detention policy, meaning that that avenue to seek bond is closed. And that's having a big impact on people like 34 year old asylum seeker Felipe Hernandez Espinoza. Originally from Nicaragua, he crossed the U S. Mexico border in 2022 and requested asylum. Last July, he was arrested at work. He has been in detention for months, first at the Florida detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz, where there have been reports of disturbing conditions.

[Giselle Solomon]

According to reports from human rights organizations, detainees have reported worms in their food toilets that don't flush and overflowing sewage. Mosquitoes and other insects everywhere in these detention facilities.

[Cecilia Ley]

Later, Hernandez was transferred to a detention center in El Paso, Texas. And throughout that time he said that he signed documents asking to return to Nicaragua or Mexico.

[Giselle Solomon]

But every time he asked that, he was told that he needs to see a judge.

[Cecilia Ley]

He finally got a hearing scheduled for two weeks from now, even as the Trump administration has offered to pay people like Hernandez to leave the country and to cover their airfare. These long delays are indicative of a key detention policy change. The AP reports that there are currently more than 70,000 people in ICE detention and nearly 8,000 of them have been held for more than six months. DHS has said that it is following the law and pointed to a recent appeals court ruling that did in fact allow the administration to continue detention without bond hearings. But the problem is so acute that one immigration attorney told Solomon that clients are saying, I don't know why I'm here. I'm ready to be deported. Before we let you go, a few other stories were following. The mass shooting at a school in Canada on Monday left at least six people dead, including a teacher and five students and dozens more injured. Police identified the suspect as 18 year old Jesse Van Roodsellaar, a former student who died at the scene from a self inflicted wound. The suspect's mother and stepbrother were also found dead at a nearby home and a motive hasn't been established. Yesterday, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed Parliament.

[Renard Johnson]

Families in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, woke to a different world. Parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters began this day as their first day on earth without someone they loved dearly. What happened has left our nation in shock and all of us in mourning.

[Cecilia Ley]

Van Roodsellaar reportedly had a lapsed gun license. Canada has stricter firearm laws than the U.S. but as Reuters reports, the federal government has struggled to deliver on a politically divisive gun buyback program that was implemented after a mass shooting five years ago. After a difficult 2025, the jobs market has made a surprisingly good start this year. Official figures show that US employers added 130,000 positions last month. The strongest growth in over A gains were concentrated in healthcare, social assistance and construction fields. But the picture was more mixed for white collar workers. Over 30,000 jobs were lost across financial and information sectors, giving some economists pause on having an overly enthusiastic outlook. According to the Wall Street Journal, Feds will likely maintain a wait and see posture before making further rate cuts, based on the January report. And finally, the Olympics can make heroes out of people from all walks of life, including personal injury lawyer and curler rich Roonan. At 54 years old, the Minnesotan could become the oldest American athlete in the Winter Games history. Despite his age, Roonan insists he's still a force to be reckoned with and wears a T shirt that reads I'm not the dad and I'm not the coach, just in case anyone mistakes him for anything but a competitor. The Wall Street Journal notes that Roonan is an alternate, meaning the SL slip and fall attorney will only get to play if someone, well, slips and falls. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. Wired takes a deep dive into a cybercrime compound in Southeast Asia and profiles the whistleblower tried to take it down from the inside. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News plus Narrated to find that story and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.