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By Scott MacFarlane, Rick Yarborough and Steve Jones

U.S. Customs and Border Protection trained 8,600 employees in the past year at its remote, highly secured facility in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a sprawling campus gaining new attention with the debate over the construction of a new wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and an increase in the force of U.S. border agents.

The agency’s Advanced Training Center, which was built almost a decade ago on federal land through legislative efforts of the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), provides a regimen including firearms, self-defense, tactical and rescue training. Operators built a pair of small-scale border fences next to which trainees practice how to stop assaults and rescue injured agents.

Training sessions include a virtual simulator program providing dozens of scenarios for which border agents must prepare, such as a potentially violent traffic stop and a mass shooting at a theater.

“The training center may not be on the southern border, but we have students from all over the nation,” said 29-year U.S. border agent Clark Messer, who was recently named director of the facility.

Self-defense training at the facility took on new importance amid a spike in assaults against border agents. Records and testimony provided to Congress in November showed a 230 percent increase in attacks against agents from 2015 to 2016.

Arthur Trebs, a border agent posted in Bellingham, Washington, said assaults are an increasing threat.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/investi...416079263.html