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Posted on Wed, Feb. 15, 2006


Danger escalates for border agents

BY DAVID MCLEMORE
The Dallas Morning News

EL PASO, Texas - The bare-bones steel pipe and metal roof structure overlooking the Rio Grande resembles a worn-out bus stop. But to the Border Patrol agents who use it, it's become a monument to the rising tide of violence aimed their way.

The number of times rifle fire has struck the shelter's bullet-proof glass can be counted in the nine star-shaped patterns that spread out like a spider's web. Several smaller, neater scars mark the spots where rocks and chunks of concrete were heaved at Border Patrol agents.

Just a few yards away, an agent's windshield was shot out. And on Jan. 13, another agent trying to stop an illegal entry was hit near the left eye by a large rock thrown with stunning accuracy from the Mexican bank. It took 25 stitches to repair the wound.

Violent assaults on agents are up 108 percent along the southwest border, national Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said last week.

In the first month of the year, there have been 193 assaults on agents, compared with 778 for all of last year, Aguilar said.

The assaults - a direct result of increased efforts by federal, state and local law enforcement officers to curtail drug trafficking and human smuggling - are also part of an explosion of violence along the border spawned by Mexican drug cartels and human smugglers fighting for turf and the lucrative corridors into the United States.

"We're making criminal enterprises look to different means to conduct their business," said Doug Mosier, spokesman for the El Paso Sector. "We see it as a desperation move."

The largest number of assaults last year occurred in the San Diego and Tucson sectors. But agents in Texas have seen significant increases.

In the El Paso Sector, which covers 125,000 square miles of border, including New Mexico and the two westernmost counties in Texas, agents reported 43 violent attacks in 2005, an increase of 105 percent from 2004. And in the Rio Grande Sector, agents have reported 41 assaults just in January 2006 - 16 more than in all of 2004.

Assaults range from firearm use to fistfights to vehicular ramming. In 2004, agents were shot at nine times and were rammed nine times by smuggler vehicles. Those numbers jumped to 32 shootings and 29 vehicular assaults in 2005.

Rock throwing, however, remains the favorite weapon.

"It can be two people or more than 20 throwing rocks," said El Paso Senior Patrol Agent Ramiro Cordero. "They may be acting out of anger, or it may be a diversion to draw in agents so they can move people or drugs farther down the border. When the rocks are flying, you just have to find the right cover."

It doesn't matter much to the agent what is used in the attack.

"A weapon is a weapon is a weapon," said Border Patrol national spokesman Salvador Zamora. "It could be a grapefruit-sized rock. It could be a vehicle used at any rate of speed to try to run over an agent. Or it could be somebody shooting sniper fire from the Mexican side. They're all dangerous."

And the threats are getting more creative and more organized, agents say.

During a visit to agents in El Paso in July, Aguilar said agents in the San Diego, Calif., Sector have encountered border thugs throwing "flaming rocks" - stones wrapped in cloth and dipped in gasoline, then heaved at agents.

"I want to make sure that the American public understands what is happening on the southern border," Aguilar said.

This year, federal authorities issued a warning to Border Patrol agents in Arizona of uncorroborated plans by members of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a savage street gang hired as enforcers by Mexican drug smuggling organizations, to assassinate agents in that state.

"We have received information before, uncorroborated information about bounties on agents, threats against agents' lives, a variety of different threats against agents," Zamora said.

"It's part of the job," he said. "We know the dangers going into this job that exist in working along the border in remote areas."

Here in El Paso, agents post themselves in marked vehicles "on the line," as close to the border as possible, to provide a visible reminder to smugglers and those seeking to cross illegally that they're being watched.

They also operate a network of checkpoints along major traffic routes along the border.

In both cases, they make tempting targets - which has angered some critics.

"By parking agents right at the border, we're certainly not stopping illegal immigration," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents 10,000 members. "But we are definitely making sitting targets of our agents. Our members tell us that they feel abandoned by Washington, that the national leaders are not taking any meaningful steps for agent safety."

Within El Paso city limits, agents on line watch park within view of each other. Farther out, the line watches may be a half-mile to 24 miles apart. Throughout the border, the agents work alone, frequently in some of the most isolated sections of the border. And they are keenly aware that backup is often a long way off.

Bonner said he would like to see additional agents assigned to the border, which would allow them to double up on patrols. And he'd like to see sanctions levied against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

"Either at the checkpoint or on line watch, always, in the back of your mind, you're thinking about where your backup may be and how long it will take for them to come if something happens," said Senior Patrol Agent Cesar Moreno, a six-year veteran. "You always plan ahead, think what steps you take if things go bad. You just have to stay focused."

Agents often find that they are dealing with a younger, more aggressive illegal immigrant who is more likely to try to fight his way into the United States. And the risks of confrontation with violent drug gangs or human smugglers are high.

"The aliens we apprehend are definitely more aggressive. We're seeing that all the time," Moreno said. "Recently I stopped a group at the checkpoint, and one guy started to fight me."

Moreno said he finally had to subdue him with pepper spray.

Of the 125,000 illegal immigrants apprehended in the El Paso Sector in 2005, more than 10 percent were found to have criminal records.

Sitting in his marked sport utility vehicle on the levee road, Moreno trains his high-powered binoculars on the flat pan of grass and brush rising up from the Rio Grande. He's looking for "crawlers," people crouched low in the grass, hoping to avoid detection from the array of infrared cameras and banks of high-intensity lights that can turn night into day.

The patched line of 6-foot fence topped with barbed wire indicates that they are often successful. So does the muddy trail that rises from the irrigation canal on the other side.

The fence along the irrigation canal - as well as the "Tortilla Curtain," an eight-mile section of barrier fence running east from El Paso - is a constant target of smugglers and illegal immigrants.

"They'll burrow under it, or they'll be out here with wire cutters or blow torches, cutting a hole through it," Cordero said. "They cut it every day, and we mend it every day."

In his budget, President Bush asked for money to provide an additional 1,500 Border Patrol agents, the majority of whom will go to the southwest border. In the El Paso Sector, which saw its manpower increase by 500 to 1,350 last year, officials expect to receive an additional 500 agents in 2006.

These agents would go to work patrolling an area roughly the size of Norway.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff vowed a zero-tolerance policy toward the rising violence directed at Border Patrol agents. He reiterated what has become a government mantra for the escalating attacks on agents: that it indicates the effectiveness of the national secure borders initiative.

"These are very sophisticated, hardened criminals who will use violence to protect their criminal businesses," Chertoff said. "The more pressure we put on them, the more violent they're going to be.

"If they think they're going to back us down or chase us away, the answer to that is no," he said. "Our Border Patrol is properly trained. They are entitled to defend themselves. They will defend themselves. We will support them in applying these rules of engagement."

Mexican authorities have also begun taking steps to address the rising violence, Chertoff said. Federal police have deployed 300 officers between Mexicali and Tijuana to bolster border protection.

The attorney general of Mexico has sent prosecutor teams to San Diego, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley to help coordinate binational law enforcement investigations.

"The Mexican government has been very interested in working with us to deal with the issue of border violence as it occurs on both sides of the border," Chertoff said.

For the agents working the line in El Paso, the added help and money is, of course, welcome. As is the array of technological weaponry that lets them track smugglers and their cargo day or night.

"The infrared cameras are great," Cordero said. "We see a person hiding in the grass that our eyes might not see. And we can zoom the camera in and read the newspaper someone is holding.

"But I never met a camera yet that could come off that pole and help chase down a suspect," he added. "Our agents have to work with what we have, and we have to be as creative as the people we're trying to stop. But it always comes down to people."