How is this not the biggest story in the news on every network right now? A Texas rancher was killed on his own property when he drove over an improvised explosive device (IED) that had been planted on a dirt road by a drug cartel.
A neighbor who was also in the vehicle was killed in the explosion and the rancher’s wife has been hospitalized with injuries. Yet if you want to learn about this attack that killed an American, you won’t find any news about it on any of the major networks here in the US.
Here’s what we know so far.
74-year-old Antonio Saldierna was an American whose family legally immigrated from Mexico. Like many ranchers along the border, his property extends into both countries. His ranch is south of Brownsville, TX, and his property extends across the border into Mexico. It seems like a weird arrangement, but there are many, many ranches like this along the border in Texas and some in Arizona.
Saldierna was driving on a dirt road on his ranch just south of the border on Tuesday when he drove over an IED. The explosion killed him and his neighbor who was also in the truck and severely injured his elderly wife.
Here’s the aftermath of the explosion:
BREAKING: A Brownsville, Texas rancher has been killed by a suspected cartel IED near the Mexican border as authorities warn of ‘growing threat’
IED? Is it time to send in the military to eradicate the cartels? pic.twitter.com/ZI9mdHbBWu
— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) February 25, 2025
People who have watched too many Hollywood movies are insisting on X/Twitter that the US military should “take out” the cartels. That’s not only unrealistic but downright foolish.
The largest fighting strength that the Taliban ever had was supposedly around 140,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. We spent 20 years trying to wipe them out and never came close to succeeding. They’d just blend in with the local populations. It’s not like they wore uniforms like a real army.
The drug cartels are now the fifth-largest employer in Mexico. There are an estimated 200,000 people working for them. The people in many of the towns love them or at least appreciate them. If you drive through any neighborhood in Mexico and find that it has beautiful, paved streets, the cartels paid for that. New schools, hospitals, soccer fields for the kids—those are all paid for by the drug cartels since the Mexican state and federal governments are so corrupt that they never do anything for the people.
Cartel employees work in the offices of the mayors and governors throughout Mexico. In many cases, the cartel-friendly mayors only got elected because the cartels assassinated all their opponents during the campaign season last year. 60 politicians running for various offices got killed by the cartels right now.
The reality is that Mexico is a failed narco-state that’s run by the cartels. Even their new president, Claudia Scheinbaum, is on the side of the cartels. She’s trying to change Mexico’s constitution right now to protect the drug cartels from the Trump administration.
We’re not going to be able to send the Navy SEALs into Mexico for a couple of weeks and “take out” the cartels. This would be a war against Mexico, the Mexican government, and the Mexican military—at a time when 30% of Mexico’s population has been allowed to move into the United States. I don’t think most Americans are mentally prepared for just how ugly this could really get if we “go to war” with the cartels.
I’m not saying that America shouldn’t try to secure our border or that we shouldn’t start blowing up these cartel thugs with drone strikes. We just need to have more realistic expectations. It could take years to get rid of the cartels via military force. We can’t just have the cartels killing American ranchers with IEDs like this is Beirut or something.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller issued a statement after the death of Mr. Saldierna. His warning urges ranchers along the border to “avoid dirt roads and remote areas, refrain from touching unfamiliar objects that could be explosive devices, limit travel to daylight hours, stay on main roads, and avoid cartel-controlled regions.”
We have no doubt that President Trump is going to start taking more aggressive actions against the cartels—and very soon. But we should have our eyes wide open about just how ugly this could get.
