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Protecting Border Patrol agents

Border Patrol warns agents of lurking MS-13 hit men

Web Posted: 01/12/2006 12:00 AM CST
Hernán Rozemberg
Express-News Immigration Writer

Border Patrol agents now are targets of gang members hired as hit men by immigrant smugglers looking to rid their business of obstacles, according to a leaked government memorandum.


The one-paragraph "officer safety alert," drafted Dec. 21 at agency headquarters in Washington, warned that Mexican smugglers, frustrated by increased U.S. border enforcement efforts, plan to put members of the El Salvador-based Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, on their payroll specifically to take out U.S. agents.

The memo lists the FBI as the information source of the new threat, but the FBI issued a statement disputing it.

The agency acknowledged media reports describing the memo but said it had received no information linking gang members to smugglers for the purpose of killing border agents.

The agency pledged to use its MS-13 National Gang Task Force to look into the matter.

For its part, the Border Patrol confirmed it sent out the alert. Though he declined to comment on its contents, Salvador Zamora, a national spokesman for the agency, said the memo was sent to all 11,200 agents "to advise them of recently received safety information."

He would not say if the FBI had provided that information.

Zamora said safety alerts are dispatched routinely on myriad subjects. They could include, for example, information gleaned from a traffic stop or new methods used by migrant detainees to sneak in contraband.

"These intelligence bulletins are commonplace, so we can keep agents up-to-date against any perceived threat," he said.

The MS-13 gang, originally started in California prisons by undocumented migrants who fled bloody civil wars in Central America in the 1980s, has grown dramatically in size and influence.

According to the FBI, membership now tops 10,000, with established chapters in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

The Dec. 21 alert has no connection to two shootings at Border Patrol agents in Brownsville last week, Zamora noted.

Each of those incidents, about a mile apart, involved unidentified attackers from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande taking aim at agents patrolling the river â€â€