Border agent’s death highlights growing risk of remote patrols
Along the vast rocky desert that stretches from Mexico into rural West Texas, Border Patrol agents like Rogelio Martinez frequently work alone, miles from civilization and from help.
Mr. Martinez loved the work, said his father, Jose Martinez. He also knew the risks. The job’s two responsibilities were stopping illegal border crossings and halting drug trafficking.
About 3 a.m. last Sunday, Jose Martinez was awakened at home in El Paso with the phone call he had long dreaded.
Summoned to the University Medical Center of El Paso, where doctors were trying in vain to resuscitate his son, Jose Martinez got a sense of what had happened in the desert about 100 miles away when he saw Rogelio Martinez’s bloodied head.
“It was difficult to look at,” he said.
Rogelio Martinez, 36, was killed,a nd a second agent who had apparently come to his aid was seriously injured, in what the federal authorities were treating on Monday as an attack. The FBI was leading the investigation and did not say Monday whether any arrests had been made.
Details were thin, but the episode in a remote stretch of Texas quickly made its way into the national conversation on immigration and border security. While Border Patrol fatalities are relatively rare, attacks against agents on the job are not infrequent. And despite a dramatic drop in border crossings under the Trump administration, assaults against officers have risen, according to data maintained by the border agency — 720 in the recently completed fiscal year, the highest number in at least five years.
Chris Cabrera, a spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, the officers’ union, said individual border agents often arrest dozens of people at a time without any help from colleagues. Most people surrender, but that is not always the case. A favorite tactic among border crossers is to hurl debris from the rugged terrain at officers, and Mr. Cabrera said that he had personally been on the receiving end of rocks thrown at him that were the size of grapefruits.
Over the weekend, the agents had been patrolling along a remote section of the border near Interstate 10 in Culberson County, Texas, where drug and human trafficking are common.
Mr. Cabrera said that according to other officers who were on duty, Rogelio Martinez went to check out a Border Patrol ground sensor that had been activated. The sensors, concealed devices that remotely alert agents when triggered, can be set off by wild animals, dying batteries or even the wind. Mr. Martinez confirmed over his radio that it had been set off by humans, Mr. Cabrera said.
Mr. Martinez called for backup, and when his partner, whose name has not been released, arrived, the partner called over the radio that Mr. Martinez was unconscious. The officer requested more support, Mr. Cabrera said.
Mr. Cabrera said officers who arrived next found both men unconscious and took them to the hospital. He said the officer who survived the incident was still recovering and remembered very little of what happened. Most of what was known had come from officers who overheard the radio traffic, he said.
Given that the attack occurred in what essentially is ground zero in the national immigration debate, officials quickly seized on it, including President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to build a wall along the Mexican border but has yet to secure the funding for it.
“We will seek out and bring to justice those responsible,” he posted to Twitter last Sunday, “We will, and must, build the Wall!”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is running for re-election in 2018, echoed the president’s sentiments in a statement: “This is a stark reminder of the ongoing threat that an unsecure border poses to the safety of our communities and those charged with defending them.”
Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic congressman from El Paso who is running for Mr. Cruz’s Senate seat, published a blog post that avoided mention of the wall. Instead, Mr. O’Rourke, who opposes the barrier, expressed support for the work of Border Patrol agents while acknowledging that the topic was contentious.
Even with the increase in violence against officers, experts who study the region said fatal incidents are still outside the norm. An official list posted online contains 38 deaths in the line of duty from 2003 to the present, not counting Mr. Martinez. The Border Patrol has about 20,000 agents.
“It’s super rare for agents to be attacked and killed,” said Jeremy Slack, a migration expert and professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. He said violent incidents are often tied to the drug trade, rather than to people seeking to enter the U.S. to work or claim asylum.