Violence flares on the southern border

We all had a good laugh last year when it was reported that Canadian border guards were walking off the job because Ottawa refused to arm them. (The problem was rectified with the rise of the current Conservative government.) American Border Patrol officers have the exact opposite probem: last year’s controversial arrest of agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean for shooting a drug smuggler have made other officers wary of pulling out their guns. At the same time, tougher immigration policies have inspired a wave of violence along the southern border, with illegal immigrants and drug traffickers attacking agents with guns, rocks, and petrol bombs.

“The attacks against us are becoming more brazen. Drug cartels have instructed their people to go down fighting, to do whatever is necessary to get the narcotics through,” said Sheriff Rick Flores of Laredo, Texas. According to officials, assaults against Border Patrol officers rose 10 percent to 843 incidents in the year to September 2006 from the same period a year before — three times the level of two years ago. “Immigrants are frustrated and are lashing out. It has reached the point that we are seeing attacks on an almost daily basis,” said Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling. These include drug smugglers sniping at agents with assault rifles and — in one worrisome incident — bringing down a patrol helicopter by throwing rocks at its rotors.

-read more in Robin Emmott’s Reuters report