Special Report: Agents Under Attack
Special Report: Agents Under Attack
Field training officer required multiple surgeries to repair damage
POSTED: 11:19 PM CDT May 18, 2015
WATCH VIDEO REPORT AT THE LINK - VERY WELL DONE
Special Report: Agents Under Attack
RIO GRANDE VALLEY -In the battle for the border, Border Patrol agents are under attack. Two agents were recently struck with rocks on the Rio Grande.
"They're buddies of mine. They're friends of mine, " said Randy De Leon. He's a Border Patrol agent, who is breaking his silence.
"They're my family. And anybody would do just about anything for family," he told CHANNEL 5 NEWS.
De Leon was raised in West Texas and is the third of four children. The all-star athlete moved to the Rio Grande Valley to be with his grandmother.
He earned a criminal justice degree from UTPA and was honored, after he and his brother pulled an elderly woman from a home that exploded.
He met his wife Luisa and they have four children.
The Border Patrol is part of their family. The field training officer said, "I believe in what I do. I really do. I believe in the badge I wear, the patches I wear, the uniform I wear…"
"There's a saying in the Border Patrol: One man, one river. And I try to be that one man sometimes."
While De Leon fought on the frontline for eight years, one day in 2010 will stay with him forever.
"I remember that night clearly. I was working the evening shift. I was training," recalls De Leon.
The Border Patrol agent and a trio of trainees were near Hidalgo on March 29, 2010. They heard drug smugglers were on the move and split up. De Leon parked his unit near the river.
"Within 20 minutes, the vehicle was coming down to load up," he said.
He remembered 10 to 15 drug mules were packing drugs into a vehicle. "They loaded up roughly… I'd say roughly 1,000 pounds in a matter of seconds," De Leon said.
He approached the vehicle head on. "When he saw me, he did a U-turn and went back to the river," he told us.
The riverbank was recently covered with concrete rocks to prevent erosion. "I knew that he wasn't going to drive down and splash down, which was a trend at the time," explained the agent. "So I backed off hoping I would give him enough time to basically bail out and just run down and abandon the load."
But the group didn't run.
"They just started throwing the rocks," said De Leon. "I'm getting attacked from both sides. … It's like a massive hail storm."
More than a dozen men hurled chucks of concrete at the agent. The rocks shattered every window of his vehicle. A piece of concrete about the size of a football flew toward the agent.
"It hit my right side of the face," he said. "I'm a big believer that my hat and my glasses protected me, for the most part, from losing my eye. Because I think it deflected off the bill of my hat and deflected down and caught this whole side of my face."
Despite his injuries, De Leon continued to chase the smugglers' vehicle. "I didn't want to give up on it," he told us. "I was like, if this is happening to me, I want that guy bad, you know, even more now."
"I can feel the blood rushing down my face. I can't see out of this eye. It's like blurry and my head's ringing. And I'm just wiping the blood off of my hand and my face," De Leon said. "And I'm chasing the vehicle, and I'm putting on the radio that I need backup immediately."
Agents scrambled to get him into an ambulance. De Leon asked another agent if his face was crushed in. "He's like, 'No. It's just a, it's just a scratch. It's a cut,'" recalled De Leon.
It wasn't just a cut.
"I had to get three stitches in my eyeball. One of the bones that was broken was the ocular bowl, which holds up your eyeball. … They literally shattered it in half. And my eyeball was sinking and falling back into my head. And I had two surgeries, reconstructive surgeries on the right side of my face, where they placed four titanium plates in my face to repair the damage," explained De Leon.
"A lot of people don't really see the damage anymore. I think the doctors did a fantastic job."
If you look closely, scarring is visible under De Leon's eye. The right side of his face lost dimension. His eye twitches, and for years, his teeth didn't line up.
The agent jokes about asking surgeons to make him look like Brad Pitt. He said, "I was like, 'Come on. Let me look like Brad Pitt." They're like, 'Umm, no.'"
De Leon chose not to photograph his injuries or the initial recovery. "Needless to say, I didn't want my family to see me that way," he told us.
However, he remembers his family's reaction. "They were sad. You could tell they wanted to cry," he said. "It meant something to them, and it means something to me."
The Border Patrol agent later spoke to his children about the attack and his work. "I tell them, 'You know, one day somebody's going to approach you. It's inevitable. Somebody's going to approach you with drugs or what not. ... I will be damned if I got my face smashed in just for you to do something I'm trying to fight and working to prevent,'" he told us.
"I do carry this with me," said De Leon. "And I don't just mean like the physical aspect. ... I don't want this to happen to me again. I don't want this to happen to any other agent."
De Leon is back on the border, patrolling the frontline.
The drug load that resulted in the attack was seized. Agents who rushed to rescue De Leon also recovered the drugs.
De Leon was one of 111 Rio Grande Valley agents attacked in the 2009 fiscal year. Hundreds of more attacks have happened since then. Border Patrol agents in the Valley saw a spike in 2012 with 125 attacks. There were 89 attacks in 2014, which is the lowest number in recent years.
Tonight, De Leon's family, like so many others, pray for his safe return home.
http://www.krgv.com/news/local-news/...3094624?item=1
Border Agents: Smugglers More Violent, Illegals More Numerous
http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetF...axsidesize=600
(John Moore/Getty Images)
Tuesday, 19 May 2015 11:21 AM
By Andrea Billups
Border Patrol agents along the Rio Grande Valley have reported violent attacks from drug smugglers who have fought back, rather than retreated, when caught, television station KRGV reports.
The incidents of ramped-up violence stand in stark contrast to federal government reports, which suggest the border is under much better control.
Two agents told KRGV they were attacked with rocks, with one sustaining a direct hit to his face that broke the bone around his eye and left him recovering from multiple reconstructive surgeries.
That agent, Randy De Leon, caught a contingent of 10 to 15 drug mules loading about 1,000 pounds of drugs into a vehicle. He chased them to the Rio Grande River, hoping they'd get out and flee. Instead, they picked up concrete rocks placed along the banks to prevent erosion and began to hurl them at him.
"I'm getting attacked from both sides. … It's like a massive hail storm," he told KRGV.
The chunks of concrete smashed his own vehicle's windows. One piece the size of the football hit his hat and then one side of his face, shattering it and causing him to nearly lose an eye.
"I can feel the blood rushing down my face. I can't see out of this eye. It's like blurry and my head's ringing. And I'm just wiping the blood off of my hand and my face," De Leon told KRGV for a special news report about border violence in his territory. "And I'm chasing the vehicle, and I'm putting on the radio that I need backup immediately."
Unaware of his injuries and struggling to stay conscious as fellow agents helped him get to an ambulance, De Leon asked how bad he was hurt. Hoping not to scare him, one told him, "'It's just a, it's just a scratch. It's a cut,'" De Leon remembered.
But the bone that holds up his eye was shattered.
Border Patrol agents report an increase in the number of people smuggled across from Mexico into Texas, many trapped inside vehicles only to be apprehended at checkpoints, El Paso TV station KVUE reported.
Dogs working at highway checkpoints have helped border agents find the hidden cargo. KVUE said that Rio Grande Valley incidents are rising, with 49 smuggled immigrants found in one 24-hour period in April. Some have suffocated on their journey, traveling in trunks, in stereo compartments and even sewn into car seats.
KVUE said about 30,000 vehicles enter from El Paso county alone each day, with smugglers using such heavy traffic as cover to slip into the U.S.
Even as agents decry the violence and increasing flow, federal authorities report that border arrests have slowed, down 31 percent since October, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is skeptical about the federal figures and has requested a 2016-17 budget of $735 million, more than double the previous budget directed toward border security, the Chronicle said.
Said Abbott spokeswoman Amelia Chasse: "The federal government's abject failure to secure the border has forced Texas to step up and divert taxpayer funds and law enforcement resources to perform what is a core responsibility of the federal government.
"With Texas continuing to spend millions in taxpayer dollars and cartel and gang activity posing a constant threat to Texas communities, it is egregious for the Obama administration to even remotely suggest the border is secure."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/bor.../19/id/645453/
