Two Central American men arrested, charged with assaulting Border Patrol agents in Imperial Beach

Alex Riggins Contact Reporter


A pair of Central American men believed to be unauthorized immigrants were charged Friday in federal court in San Diego for allegedly assaulting U.S. Border Patrol agents in separate incidents Thursday night near Imperial Beach.

One of the men was from Honduras and the other from El Salvador, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which alleged that one man elbowed an agent and the other tried unsuccessfully to punch another agent.

A statement from federal prosecutors did not say whether either man was believed to have reached the border in the large caravan of asylum-hopeful migrants from Central America that arrived earlier this month in Tijuana.

Events leading to the arrest of the Honduran suspect began around 9:30 p.m. in an area about four miles west of San Ysidro, and about 400 yards north of the barrier between the U.S. and Mexico, according to the federal criminal complaint.

That’s where he was allegedly spotted along with four other men — one from Honduras and three from El Salvador — and ordered to lie down and not move.

Prosecutors said the group was initially compliant, with the exception of the suspect, who at one point stood up as the Border Patrol agent was trying to handcuff him.

When the other four men stood up and ran, the suspect allegedly elbowed the agent in the chest, and then the agent “deployed several strikes to (the suspect’s) body and head,” according to the criminal complaint. The suspect then tried to grab the handcuffs from the agent, sparking a tug-of-war that sent both men tumbling down a hill.

The suspect escaped and was at large for about an hour, during which time the other four men were detained, court documents said. The suspect was detained around 10:30 p.m. and placed under arrest, when he allegedly admitted to entering the country without authorization.

He was charged Friday with assault on a federal officer and illegal entry.

The suspect from El Salvador was detained about 15 minutes later in the same area near Imperial Beach. Prosecutors said he ran toward a Border Patrol agent — apparently unprovoked — and “reached back with his arm and swung” at the agent.

The agent said he avoided the punch and wrestled the suspect to the ground, but the man momentarily escaped and ran south toward the border fence, court documents said. As he tried to scale the fence to cross back into Mexico, the agent was able to detain him.

The suspect allegedly admitted to being from El Salvador and entering the U.S. without authorization. He, too, was charged Friday with assault on a federal officer and illegal entry.

Border Patrol agents and federal prosecutors said it was at least the third incident involving an assault on a federal officer near the border this week.

On Monday, 57-year-old Mexican citizen Hector Rodriguez-Chavez — who prosecutors said has been deported from the U.S. on five occasions — was allegedly spotted hiding in tall grass about two miles east of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. As an agent approached Rodriguez, he allegedly turned and pointed a loaded pistol at the agent.

Prosecutors said the agent placed his body on Rodriguez’s right arm to try to gain control of the pistol, and the two men wrestled for about a minute until two other Border Patrol agents arrived. One of those other agents used a Taser to subdue Rodriquez, who was detained, arrested and charged in U.S. District Court later that day on one count of assault on a federal officer and one count of alien in possession of a firearm.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, assaults on Border Patrol agents have recently spiked — though an investigation by the news website The Intercept disputed the sharp rise, contributing it to artificial inflation because of the way assaults are tallied.

Border Patrol officials reported 786 assaults against agents in fiscal year 2017, a spike of 73 percent over fiscal year 2016, even though apprehensions fell from 415,816 to 310,532. In the San Diego Sector, there were 84 assaults on agents reported in fiscal year 2017, up from 52 the previous year.

But The Intercept’s investigation found that a change in the way assaults were reported in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley led to many of the additional assault reports over the prior year. In at least one instance, Border Patrol officials in the Rio Grande Valley multiplied six suspected assailants by the three types of items they threw — rocks, bottles and tree branches — and by the seven agents who were targeted, for a total of 126 assaults.

According to The Intercept, conventional law enforcement accounting would tally the incident as seven agents assaulted — not seven agents times six perpetrators times three projectiles.

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