6/24/2014
McALLEN — The shift in human smuggling routes that has diverted most of the people coming from Central and South America into the Rio Grande Valley has not only overburdened processing and housing facilities — it has also placed the lives of federal agents at risk.
Agents with the U.S. Border Patrol are tasked with stopping drug and human smugglers along the border and when they apprehend people from countries other than Mexico, they process them and turn them over to immigration officials for removal proceedings. That processing task has become more and more difficult this year as the number of people from Central and South America entering the Rio Grande Valley continues to grow.
According to information released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, overall border apprehensions across the U.S.-Mexico border have only slightly risen and remain at near-historic lows, but the rise in apprehensions and processing of children in the Rio Grande Valley presents new operational challenges.
In order to continue processing the numbers of detainees, the agency has been transporting detainees to other areas. Locally, they have had to pull agents off from patrolling the border to help in the processing and holding areas, said Chris Cabrera, a local spokesman from the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents many of the agents in green uniform.
One of the main concerns of federal agents guarding the border is that with the increased number of people coming across and the limited resources and agent at hand, the number of assaults against U.S. Border Patrol agents appears to be on the rise. But unlike state agencies, where people can face charges for resisting arrest and assaulting a peace officer, in the case of Border Patrol agents, only the most serious cases are investigated and prosecuted, Cabrera said.
“Putting your hands on a police officer is enough to get you arrested,” Cabrera said. “Sadly enough that doesn’t appear to be the case for this agency. It is disheartening to the agents, we are disheartened by the fact that our agency is not interested in protecting us and prosecuting those who try to hurt an agent.”
On June 15, an agent tried to stop a group of people who had crossed the Rio Grande south of Pharr. According to an FBI criminal complaint, Llevry Ramon Herrera punched the agent, tried to take his baton and ripped off his radio before managing to flee. Other agents caught Herrera and he remains in federal custody without bond facing assault charges.
Cases where an agent is placed in danger by people resisting are all too common, Cabrera said, adding that as a union representative he receives reports or hears of a handful of assaults a week, where unless an agent is seriously hurt, the incident is noted without action.
Agents have also been involved in scuffles with detainees at the processing centers, but supervisors are quick to put a lid on those incidents, he said.
“We always worry about safety, the last thing we want is for one of our agents to not come home that night,” Cabrera said. “Our members are well-trained and follow the use-of-force policies to the dot. However, we don’t know why the agency appears to not want to talk about these cases.”
Border Patrol’s local public affairs office did not return calls seeking comment last week.
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