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According to a recent report by the Associated Press, Border Patrol agents are firing tear gas and powerful pepper-spray weapons across the border into Mexico to repel what the agency says are an increasing number of attacks from the Mexican side of the line in the form of hurled rocks, bottles and bricks.
The Border Patrol says its agents have been attacked nearly 1,000 times during the last year. Border Patrol agents were attacked 987 times along the U.S.-Mexico border during the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, the agency said. That's up 31 percent from 752 attacks a year earlier, and it's the highest number since the agency began recording attacks in the late 1990s.
The agency's top official in San Diego, Mike Fisher, said agents are taking action because Mexican authorities have been slow to respond. "We have been taking steps to ensure that our agents are safe," Fisher said. The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the crossfire. "A neighbor shouted, 'Stop it! There are children living here," said Esther Arias Medina, 41, who fled her Tijuana, Mexico, shanty with her 3-week-old grandson after the infant began coughing from smoke that seeped through the walls.
A helmeted agent on the U.S. side said nothing as he stood with a rifle on top of a ten-foot border fence next to the three-room home that Arias shares with six others. "We don't deserve this," Arias told the AP's Elliot Spagat. "The people who live here don't throw rocks. Those are people who come from the outside, but we're paying the price."
Residents in Arias' hardscrabble neighborhood described eight attacks since last summer that involved tear gas or pepper spray. In some of those incidents residents were forced to evacuate. Mexico's acting consul general in San Diego, Ricardo Pineda, has demanded that U.S. authorities stop firing onto Mexican soil. He met with Border Patrol officials last month after the agency fired tear gas into Mexico.
The head of a union representing Border Patrol employees said the violence may also stem from the decision to put agents right up against the border, a departure from the early 1990s when they waited farther back to make arrests. "When you get that close to the fence, your agents are sitting ducks," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council. Some have suggested that the response from Border Patrol personnel – using tear gas and pepper spray to fight back – is an improvement over the past when live rounds were fired across the border.
Two men suspected of throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents have been shot and killed over the last two years. Benito Arias said his 19-year-old sister-in-law fainted during an apparent tear gas attack recently. The woman, five months pregnant, was given oxygen at the hospital.
His father, Jose Arias, fled with his wife a few blocks away, where paramedics checked their blood pressure. He said he sympathizes with the Border Patrol because Mexican authorities do nothing to prevent people from hurling rocks and bottles over the fence at agents. "This is a matter between government and government," Arias, 75, told the AP. "They have to work out an agreement. We are innocent. What can we do about it?" Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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