Border agents change tactics after assaults

Carolyn Hileman* | February 9, 2007

Guardsman Steve Hammann of Buffalo said the soldiers who are on the border - as part of the Bush administration’s plan to back up the Border Patrol - know they’re constantly being watched by smugglers’ scouts. “They see us, we see them,” he said. “They know we’re here.” Assaults on agents, from rockings to shootings to attempts to run them down, climbed from 146 in the 2004 fiscal year to 213 in the 2006 fiscal year, in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which covers 261 miles of the Arizona-Mexico border. Ten agents in the Tucson sector were shot at in fiscal 2006, though none were hit. The year before, two agents were shot in their legs near Nogales after jumping a group of drug “mules,” or backpackers. In Arizona’s other Border Patrol sector, assaults on agents, including shootings, went from 119 in the 2005 fiscal year to 148 in the last fiscal year.

The Voice

Contributor's website: http://www.thevoice.name

*Content posted by a user may not be completely written by that user. Content from another source is cited in either block quotes, with quotes or with a link to the original material. Content from other sites is posted for commentary and news purposes under fair use. Each user is responsible for their own postings and a particular posting should not be construed as being endorsed by this site or it's owner.