A significant increase in violent attacks on Border Patrol agents has occurred in West Texas in recent years, the head of the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector says.
Since Oct. 1, the start of fiscal year 2024, a total of 66 agents stationed in the El Paso sector have been assaulted, according to a press release from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
In fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30, 104 agents were assaulted, up from 56 such assaults in fiscal 2022 and 54 in fiscal 2021.
“We will not tolerate any harm to the well-being of those dedicated to protecting others,” Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good of the El Paso Sector said in a public statement. “Our law enforcement partners stand with us in bringing those responsible to justice.”
El Paso, one of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors along the U.S.-Mexico border, includes a portion of West Texas and all of New Mexico.
An increase in illegal border crossings during the Biden-Harris administration has brought an increase in violent attacks on Border Patrol agents, according to a recent Customs and Border Protection memo. The violence occurs when illegal aliens or smugglers are unsuccessful in attempts to evade law enforcement.
“Migrants often throw rocks and glass bottles at agents when trying to evade apprehension,” CBP said in the memo. “There have been numerous instances of vehicles receiving extensive damage from rocks.”
Violent attempts to evade arrest range from biting Border Patrol agents to trying to kill them.
An illegal alien shot an agent twice near Lordsburg, New Mexico, while that agent was “conducting an immigration stop,” according to CBP.
“The agent survived the shooting due to his ballistic vest,” the agency said. “The man was [convicted and] sentenced to 19 years in federal prison for attempting to murder a U.S. Border Patrol agent.”
Good noted that John Morales, the FBI special agent in charge of the El Paso division, and Alex Uballez, U.S. attorney for the district of New Mexico, recently posted a video on the Facebook page for the El Paso sector warning illegal aliens who might try violence to avoid arrest.
“Assault on federal agents is not just a crime, it is an affront to our principles of justice and to the safety of our nation,” Good said, adding that anyone who assaults an agent will “swiftly receive the full penalties of the United States law.”
“Whether you use a gun or your fists or a cut-up soda can, we will come for you,” Uballez warns in the video.
Since the beginning of fiscal year 2024 in October, the Border Patrol has encountered 14,000 “criminal noncitizens” between ports of entry on U.S. borders.
Such encounters with criminal noncitizens had declined by roughly 2,000 a year from 2017 to 2020, hitting a recent low in fiscal 2020 of 2,438 before trending upward over the past four fiscal years.
“Here on the border, human smuggling organizations play a dangerous game,” Uballez says in the video. “That’s why we’ve targeted for federal prosecution anyone who poses a threat to the safety of our community.”
