U.S. agents under greater
attack on Mexico border
08 Mar 2007 19:30:33 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Robin Emmott
LAREDO, Texas, March 8 (Reuters) -
Frustrated by tighter
security on the U.S.-Mexico border, illegal immigrants and
drug traffickers are taking it out on U.S. agents, increasingly
attacking them with guns, rocks and petrol bombs.
Assaults against Border Patrol officers rose
10 percent to 843 incidents in the year to September 2006
from the same period a year before, officials say. It is
also a near three-fold increase from two years previously.
Mexican drug cartels, locked in a turf feud
and under pressure from an army crackdown, are lashing out
at law enforcement officers in Texas. "The attacks
against us are becoming more brazen. Drug cartels have instructed
their people to go down fighting, to do whatever is necessary
to get the narcotics through," said Rick Flores, Webb
County sheriff in Laredo, Texas.
He said drug smugglers are increasingly taking
pot shots at agents with assault rifles from inside Mexico
at night, although no one has been killed.
They are also using riskier routes to bring
drugs across the border, leading to clashes with U.S. law
enforcement. Laredo lies across the Rio Grande from Nuevo
Laredo, one of the Mexican cities worst hit by a fight between
rival drug gangs that killed around 2,000 people last year.
The area is a key entry point for cocaine. In the Yuma sector,
which covers a 125-mile (200-km) desert strip in southwest
Arizona, attacks on agents rose 60 percent between last
Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, official data shows. Large groups of
illegal immigrants regularly pelt Border Patrol agents with
softball-size rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails, leaving
agents with burns, bruises and head wounds. "Immigrants
are frustrated and are lashing out. It has reached the point
that we are seeing attacks on an almost daily basis,"
said Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling. In one assault
in 2005, a group of rock-throwing illegal immigrants damaged
the rotor of a Border Patrol helicopter and forced it to
make an emergency landing.
TIGHTER SECURITY
Life has become more difficult for illegal
immigrants and professional people smugglers.
President George W. Bush ordered 6,000 National Guard troops
to the border last May in a move the Homeland Security Department
says has cut the flow of illegal immigrants crossing north
by more than 40 percent.
The U.S. government is also boosting its border-monitoring
technology, including trucks with infrared cameras and underground
sensors that detect footsteps as well as surveillance drones
flying overhead.
Border Patrol agents are wary of using their weapons after
two agents were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison in
2006 for shooting a drug smuggler in the buttocks, officials
say.
The killing of an illegal immigrant in January by a Border
Patrol agent infuriated Mexico, which demanded an inquiry.
"Smugglers are emboldened to attack as agents are hesitant
about returning fire," said Andy Ramirez of the Friends
of the Border Patrol, a pressure group for greater border
security.
Mexicans are more sensitive about the border since the U.S.
Congress voted last year to build a 700-mile (1,100-km)
border fence to prevent illegal immigration.
Rights groups and academics say the rising border violence
underscores the need for a U.S. guest worker program and
more coordinated campaigns between Mexico City and Washington
to cut drug consumption and weaken cartels.
"The continued demand for immigrant workers and narcotics
in the United States means that stronger border security
isn't the solution. As a stand-alone policy, it will only
increase the violence," said Jose Maria Ramos, a security
expert at the Tijuana-based research institute Colegio de
la Frontera Norte.
(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix)
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