Thread: Border Patrol agents accused of Mexican standoff

Nov. 10, 2006, 7:05P

Border Patrol agents accused of Mexican standoff

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press


MONTERREY, Mexico — U.S. Border Patrol agents chasing after suspected drug traffickers on the Texas border allegedly crossed into Mexico and engaged in a brief standoff with Mexican police officers. No shots were fired, a Mexican official said today.

Jose Luis Delgado, a police officer in the town of Guadalupe, about 25 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, said he and two other officers responded Thursday afternoon to a report that a pickup loaded with marijuana had been abandoned in the Rio Grande when they encountered several U.S. Border Patrol agents on Mexican territory. Ciudad Juarez is located across the border from El Paso.

Delgado said he and the two other officers arrived to the scene with their weapons drawn.

"When we arrived (the U.S. officials) drew their weapons," Delgado said in a telephone interview, adding that no shots were fired.

Delgado said about 20 or 25 U.S. Border Patrol officers had formed a human chain along the shallow waters of the river and were unloading the packages from the vehicle when he identified himself as a police officer and asked the U.S. officials "wearing green uniforms" to leave because they were in Mexican territory.

"They even asked us to turn the car over to them, but I said no," Delgado said.

The U.S. officials returned to the U.S. side of the border and a few remained there until Mexican officials towed the car, Delgado said.

Rogelio Garcia, a spokesman with the U.S. Border Patrol El Paso sector, confirmed that U.S. agents seized about 300 pounds of marijuana from a pickup that at least two suspected drug traffickers abandoned in the river before running into Mexico.

Garcia said he couldn't confirm whether the pickup was on the Mexican side of the border because the matter "is still being investigated."

Garcia said U.S. agents began chasing the pickup fitted with a camper shell in Fort Hancock when the driver crossed the river into Mexico about three miles west of the Fabens port of entry.

Garcia said the area, where the river is about 2 feet deep, is commonly used by drug traffickers.

Rene Medrano, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office in Chihuahua, where Guadalupe is located, said state investigators seized 1,445 pounds from the 2005 Chevrolet pickup, which was reported stolen in El Paso.

He said the truck was stuck in mud about 115 feet from the banks of the Mexican side of the river.

Medrano said he couldn't corroborate the alleged incursion of U.S. agents into Mexico because "when state officials arrived, U.S. Border Patrol agents were on the U.S. side."

Medrano said the case has been turned over to federal officials.

Associated Press writers Marina Montemayor in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Alicia A. Caldwell in El Paso contributed to this report.

On the Web

U.S. Border Patrol: http://www.cbp.gov
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4326738.html

If they got the drugs off the streets and chased the morons back home, they should be heroes. These Mexican drug dealers are ruthless. We had someone kill a family of 4 on the turnpike. It was drug related involving Mexicans. They never said if all parties involved were legals or not.