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Assaults on border agents in EP double

Louie Gilot
El Paso Times

The number of El Paso Border Patrol agents who had to jump out of the way of moving vehicles, fight undocumented immigrants and dodge grapefruit-size rocks and bullets doubled this year, agency officials said.

The Border Patrol recorded 43 assaults against agents in the El Paso sector in fiscal year 2005, which ended in September, compared with 21 in fiscal year 2004. Nationwide, agents were assaulted 687 times in fiscal 2005 year, compared with 354 the previous year. About 11,000 Border Patrol agents are working in the United States.

"We believe some of the increase can be traced to increased aggressions by suspected drug and human smugglers trying to ward off agents from their turfs," said Doug Mosier, the Border Patrol spokesman in El Paso.

Officials said smugglers, frustrated by the recent tightening of border security, try to distract agents or lead them away from a crossing point by throwing rocks from Mexico, the most common means of assault.

"These are not small stones or pebbles. They are baseball, grapefruit-size rocks," said Mario Villarreal, spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol.

The only recourse when agents are attacked from Mexico is to call Mexican officials to investigate, officials said.

Some Mexico-based attackers use high-powered slingshots with metal ball bearings or shoot guns, officials said. In the San Diego and El Centro sectors in California, the attackers have thrown Molotov cocktails, officials said.

Tucson is the most dangerous sector for Border Patrol agents because of the size of the smuggling activity, but violence occurred all along the Southwest border.

In El Paso in February, an agent who spotted three men hiding behind a car was hit in the face and stomach while chasing one of them, Mosier said. The attacker was arrested.

The latest incident occurred Saturday in El Centro, Calif., when a man drove away from a checkpoint, dragging an agent with him.

During the summer, two agents were shot in the legs by drug smuggling suspects in Nogales, Ariz. The last agent to die on duty was involved in a car accident in Dec. 20, 2004, in the Tucson sector.