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Families Pay as US Agents Under Attack Fire Tear Gas Into Mexico
The Associated Press
Tuesday 18 December 2007
San Diego - 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 by assailants hurling stones, bottles and bricks.
The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being
caught in the cross-fire.
Esther Arias Medina, 41, fled her shanty in Tijuana with her 3-week-old grandson
last week in the midst of an attack. The boy had begun coughing, Ms. Arias said,
after smoke seeped through the walls of the three-room home, which she shares
with six others.
"We don't deserve this," she said. "The people who
live here don't throw rocks. Those are people who come from the outside.
But we're paying the price."
Witnesses in Ms. Arias's neighborhood described eight attacks since August
that involved tear gas or pepper spray, some that forced residents to evacuate.
The Border Patrol said its agents had been attacked nearly 1,000 times during
a one-year period. The agency's top official in San Diego, Mike Fisher,
said agents were taking action because the Mexican authorities had been slow
to respond. When an attack occurs, Mr. Fisher said, the agents often wait hours
for Mexican officers, who, he said, usually never arrive.
"We have been taking steps to ensure that our agents are safe,"
he said.
In October, agents in California and Arizona received compressed-air guns that
shoot pepper-spray canisters more than 200 feet. (Agents already had less powerful
launchers, which lose their punch after about 30 feet.) Border Patrol SWAT teams
along the 1,952-mile border are also equipped with tear gas, "flash bombs"
that emit blinding light and "sting ball" grenades that disperse
hundreds of tiny rubber pellets.
United States officials say the new tactics may spare lives. In March, an agent
shot and killed a 20-year-old Mexican man whose arm was cocked; that fatality
occurred in Calexico, Calif., where attacks with stones have soared. And two
years ago, an agent fatally shot a stone thrower at the San Diego-Tijuana border.
Mexico's acting consul general in San Diego, Ricardo Pineda Albarrán,
has insisted that United States authorities stop firing onto Mexican soil. Mr.
Pineda met with Border Patrol officials last month after the agency fired tear
gas into Mexico. The agency defended that action, saying agents were being hit
with a hail of ball bearings from slingshots in Mexico.
United States officials say the violence indicates that smugglers are growing
more desperate as increased security makes it harder to sneak across the border.
The assailants try to distract agents long enough to let people dash into the
United States.
The leader of a union representing Border Patrol employees said the violence
also resulted from a 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 union, the National Border Patrol Council.
Border Patrol agents were attacked 987 times along the border during the 12-month
period that ended Sept. 30, the agency said. That was up 31 percent over the
previous year and was the highest number since the agency began recording attacks
in the late 1990s.
Agent Joseph Ralph estimates that he has been struck by stones 20 times since
joining the Border Patrol in 1987, once fracturing a shoulder blade. "You
find yourself trying to take cover," he said.
About four months ago, a large stone struck the hood of Agent Ellery Taylor's
vehicle. "The only thing you can think is, 'I'm glad that
that wasn't my head,'" Agent Taylor said. "There's
no way to see it coming."
On the Mexican side, Benito Arias said his 19-year-old sister-in-law fainted
during an apparent tear gas attack about two weeks ago. The woman, five months
pregnant, was given oxygen at the hospital.
Mr. Arias's father, José Arias, said he sympathized with the Border
Patrol because the Mexican authorities did nothing to prevent people from hurling
stones over the fence at agents.
"This is a matter between government and government," the elder
Mr. Arias said. "They have to work out an agreement. We are innocent.
What can we do about it?"
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