Thread: AZ: Attacks on local border agents drop

They're at the Tijuana/San Diego area now.
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Attacks on local border agents drop
BY JAMES GILBERT, SUN STAFF WRITER
December 19, 2007 - 8:18PM
While attacks against Border Patrol agents are increasing elsewhere on the border, they're actually decreasing in the Yuma area, according to the patrol.

Eric Anderson, a spokesman for the patrol's Yuma sector, said the drop in attacks on Yuma-area agents is an indication the Border Patrol has stepped up security along the U.S.-Mexican border.

"There is less activity occurring now as well due to better enforcement," Anderson said. "The equipment and manpower we have received has made it harder for people to cross here, so they aren't trying it here as often. They are going somewhere else."

According to a news release issued recently by the U.S. Border Patrol, attacks against agents continue to rise at a record pace. Nationally, 250 assaults occurred between Oct. 1 and Dec. 16 this year, compared to 181 assaults during the same period a year ago - a 38 percent increase.

But assaults have gone down in the Yuma sector.

"The Yuma sector is one of the few sectors that has actually had a decrease in assaults on agents," said Anderson.

So far in the Yuma sector, in the 2008 fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, there have been 12 assaults on agents, compared to 69 last year in the same time period - an 83 percent decrease.

By comparison, there were a total of 193 assaults on agents in all of fiscal 2007 in the Yuma sector - a 15 percent increase from the 168 total assaults reported here in 2006.

"We are hoping it doesn't return to the levels it once was," Anderson said.

Agents are most often attacked by smugglers, drug traffickers and organized criminal gangs in areas south of the Mexican border where drug and human trafficking organizations have been entrenched and where they have little to no fear of apprehension or arrest by Mexican authorities.

Agents along the U.S.-Mexico border have experienced assaults by rocks, gunfire, Molotov cocktails and vehicles, as well as person-to-person assaults, the release said. Recently helicopters flying in support of Border Patrol agents on the ground have received gunfire.

Likewise, Yuma sector agents have been targets of rocks and gunfire, and a Yuma sector helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing near Andrade, Calif., in August 2005 when one of its rotors was hit by a rock.

"The criminal element is assaulting agents in order to try and take over," Anderson said. "But that isn't ever going to happen."

David V. Aguilar, chief of the Border Patrol, stated in the news release: “The American public and the border community must understand that this situation is no longer about illegal immigration or narcotics trafficking. It is about criminals and smuggling organizations fighting our agents with lethal force to take over a part of American territory so that they can conduct criminal activity.â€

Pepper spray must be working pretty well. keep it up!