http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... 80396/1012

November 28, 2005


Border Patrol now targeted by smugglers
Incidents of assaults on agents nearly doubled in past year as human-trafficking profits rose

By Mike Madden
Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON -- From rocks hurled at government trucks to shootings in the desert, assaults on U.S. Border Patrol agents nearly doubled in the most recent fiscal year.
From Oct. 1, 2004, to Sept. 30, the Border Patrol registered 687 assaults on its agents, up from 349 the year before, according to statistics obtained by Gannett News Service.

Government officials say the increase reflects the growing influence of organized crime syndicates in border trafficking -- and the higher profit margin involved in smuggling immigrants across the border for as much as $2,000 per trip.

"Smuggling organizations have now shifted resources to areas that are very rural and isolated, and with that, the prices that the smugglers are charging the aliens now rivals drug smuggling," said Mario Villarreal, a spokesman at the Border Patrol's national headquarters in Washington. "It's a big business."

Drug cartels from Mexico have gotten much more aggressive in smuggling drugs and people across the border, hiring local gangs on both sides of the international line and arming members with AK-47s, grenades and other heavy weaponry, federal law enforcement officials told Congress last week.

Patrolling the nation's borders always is a dangerous job, as agents have been aware. Still, the sharp and sudden spike in violence has taken them by surprise.

"That's always going through the back of your mind -- even if they don't kill you with the rock, they could knock you out and take your weapon," said Jim Hawkins, a Border Patrol agent in the Nogales, Ariz., station.

Hawkins said he has had rocks thrown at him so often on patrol that the incidents seemed routine.

"Every day you put that uniform on, you really got to have it in the back of your head that you have to take care of yourself if you want to make it home," he said.

Officials called the increased violence a side effect of the Border Patrol's successful effort to crack down on illegal crossings. They said the crackdown has pushed frustrated smugglers to lash out violently, using attacks to create diversions to open up easier paths into the country.

But the president of the union representing Border Patrol agents blamed the Border Patrol's tactics for the attacks and dismissed the notion that the violence means the government has better control of the frontier.

"They have adopted a strategy of placing us in very close proximity to the border, where essentially we're sitting ducks," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents about 10,000 agents.

The agency has put more officers on the border in the past few years, though the increase in violence far outpaced the increase in hiring. Agents frequently are deployed right next to the border, in fixed positions in some sectors, in an attempt to deter smugglers.

Assaults of all kinds increased last year. Only one attack occurred outside the Southwest: a shooting involving an agent from the Grand Forks, N.D., sector.

In the Yuma and Tucson, Ariz., sectors, agents faced an average of one assault every day in fiscal 2005. In the San Diego sector, assaults increased nearly 89 percent last year, from 134 to 253, and agents already have logged 40 assaults in less than two months this fiscal year. In Texas, agents are shot at from across the Rio Grande as they patrol the line.

Agents also routinely report being targeted by grapefruit-size rocks thrown at their trucks from the Mexican side of the border. Trucks carrying drugs or illegal immigrants have tried to ram Border Patrol vehicles as agents attempted to stop the trucks.

Shootings are becoming more frequent as well. In the Tucson and Yuma sectors in fiscal year 2005, there were 45 shootings, up from 15 in 2004. Two agents from Nogales were hit in an ambush as they tracked drug smugglers through the desert on June 30 in one of the year's most serious assaults. Both are recovering. Neither is back on duty.

Agents increasingly use "war wagons," heavy-duty trucks designed to protect against rocks, and carry small plastic capsules filled with pepper powder and fired from special guns as a nonlethal alternative to shooting at their attackers. Officials acknowledge the violence is unlikely to end anytime soon.

"It is a very, very dangerous job," Villarreal said.