Assaults against border agents rising; few attackers are prosecuted

While Republicans trip over themselves to condemn President Trump’s tweets attacking Hamas supporter Ilhan Omar, they continue to do nothing for victims of illegal immigration or for law enforcement. The more they allow Democrats to focus on the needs of illegal aliens rather than those of Americans, the more border agents are being assaulted without any response from our government. Very few illegal aliens are being prosecuted for anything, including assaulting border agents.

What is the message being sent to the cartels and illegal aliens? That they are now a protected class here and we will do nothing to counter their behavior. Sergio Tinoco, a supervisor border agent in the Rio Grande Valley, tells me that agents patrolling the river are getting attacked with rocks as the smugglers become emboldened by the lack of response or prosecutions.

“I work in the area in south Texas where of course we have the Rio Grande River as our actual border,” said Tinoco on my podcast last Thursday. “We have a riverine unit, a boat crew that patrols up and down the river. Mind you, the border is directly somewhere in the center or quasi-center of that river, so we ourselves and our agents cannot engage with anyone on the Mexican riverbank. We just can't. Our rules of engagement do not allow that. The cartels know this; the smugglers know this. And of course, there's a lot of high brush here in south Texas, and daily, we have smugglers, we have coyotes that will throw rocks at our riverine crews, at our agents, do everything they possibly can to harm them and to hurt them because they want them out of the area so that they can either bring their illicit drugs through or they can bring in the illegal immigrants across the river.”

You read that correctly. Belligerent terrorist groups that the State Department refuses to designate as such can now throw rocks at our agents knowing that it will cause them to retreat in our own territory, thereby allowing them to get in their human and drug contraband. They are certain we will not retaliate.

Agent Tinoco says they are left with few options. They must either retreat or try to

“pepper them with some type of CS gas pellets” and hope they will disperse. “This is a dangerous task that we encounter every single day.”

Tinoco also told me that not enough of these people are being prosecuted. “If any of us is assaulted, we would want that individual to be punished. I'm sure that if a citizen in … another part of America … I'm sure that if that individual was assaulted, everybody in that community would be seeking justice. And that's all our agents ... that's all we ask for. We ask for the exact same thing that any other citizen that we're protecting would ask for, and sadly we don't get that as often as we would like. “

Tinoco noted that this is what “lends to the downfall of our morality where eventually you'll start hearing agents say, ‘Why even report this to someone? Nothing's going to happen.’ And that's a very bad situation to be in because you want to still encourage our agents to report everything.”

Jaeson Jones, retired captain of the Texas Rangers' Border Security Operations Center (BSOC) , told me that border agents are often told to go to Texas authorities to push for prosecutions because the feds won’t take the cases. “Today, it is routine to see state charges filed in border-related cases not taken by the feds – everything from pursuits, assaults, aggravated assaults, and smuggling charges etc.”

Jones recalled an incident in south Texas involving a Border Patrol agent who had been assaulted by an illegal alien during an apprehension. The agent was injured, yet federal prosecutors didn’t take the case. “The Texas Ranger captain who was commanding the one-week joint border mission learned of this assault and was incredulous, “What do mean they won’t accept charges?” he asked loudly with clear anger in his voice. When he heard the news from the supervising agent assigned to the command post, the captain turned to his lieutenant and said go find out if one of our men has been injured, then that suspect is going to jail … do you understand? Within a few hours, the suspect was booked into the Hidalgo County, Texas, jail for assault on a police officer.”

It turns out, according to CBP data, that assaults on CBP personnel have roughly doubled over the past two fiscal years relative to the previous few years. Yet, surprisingly, the use of force against illegal aliens is down. Those two stats are no coincidence, according to one agent in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley who must remain anonymous because he’s not authorized to speak to the media.

“The cartel scouts are telling the illegal immigrants to fight us. If they win, great, they get away or enable others in the area to get away. If they lose, they claim excessive use of force. I was just recently attacked by a Salvadoran couple at the river as part of a group of several dozen who got away while they tussled with me. My military and jujitsu training kicked in and I overpowered them, but I sustained minor injuries to my face. In this case, they were charged, but only received time served. They do not fear prosecution, and they know we have weak rules of engagement. If you don’t know how to fight hand-to-hand, you are out of luck.”

Indeed, the entire impetus for this border crisis was when the politicians and media supplanted the rule of law with virtue-signaling to ensure that illegal aliens are exempted from prosecution because they will be separated from their children, even though in many cases, they children are not theirs.

There might be no consequences for illegal aliens and their smugglers invading our border. But the American people and the border agents are feeling all of the consequences.

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