Yuma border attacks decline

The year 2008 got off to a painful start for Yuma-area Border Patrol agents who lost one of their own at the hands of a smuggling suspect, but assaults on agents here are actually down 80 percent from last year, according to Border Patrol statistics.

Agent Eric Anderson, spokesman for the Border Patrol's Yuma sector, says attacks on agents in the sector have dropped so dramatically because illegal entries have dropped as significantly, by 78 percent.

The Border Patrol has increased the number of agents and beefed up overall security in the Yuma sector in recent years, prompting aliens and drug traffickers to shift their routes of travel to other points along the border, Anderson said.

"There are less people coming across and there's less pushback," Anderson said.

Rock throwing incidents in San Luis, Ariz., account for most of the assaults on agents in the Yuma sector, he said.

Rocks are thrown at Yuma-area agents either to divert them away from illegal entries or out of frustration on the part of aliens or smugglers who are prevented from crossing, Anderson said.

Less frequent modes of attack on agents are gunshots and physical assaults, he said.

From Oct. 1 through April 30, there were 23 assaults on Yuma sector agents, down from 115 in the same period a year earlier, Anderson said.

One of the assaults this year claimed the life of Border Patrol agent Luis Aguilar, who was run over by a smuggling vehicle in the Imperial Sand Dunes in January as he was laying down spike strips in an effort to stop the vehicle. The vehicle, a Hummer believed to have entered the country with a load of aliens or drugs, was being chased back toward Mexico by U.S. law enforcement officers when it struck the agent. The driver, identified as Jesus Navarro Montes, is in custody in Mexico facing prosecution there on smuggling charges.

Fewer alien apprehensions in the sector this year reflect a trend of fewer illegal entries, Anderson said. From Oct. 1 to April 30, sector agents made 6,431 alien arrests, down from 28,829 in the same period the year before.

The addition of new agents, border fencing and surveillance technology in the sector is driving aliens to the San Diego and El Paso areas, Anderson said, "and they're just continuing their assaults there."

The Border Patrol buildup also has resulted in fewer attacks on Yuma County sheriff's deputies working along the border, sheriff's spokesman Capt. Eben Bratcher said.

"We have had incidents of rocks thrown and rounds fired from across the border," Bratcher said. "This peaked in 2006 and it has dropped off significantly to the point of being almost nonexistent."

He said fewer attacks on deputies are "directly related" to the drop in illegal entries resulting from the buildup.

"We are not encountering anywhere near the numbers we used to," Bratcher said.

Elsewhere, violence has spilled across the border into the United States as Mexican drug wars escalate.

In the past few months, three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the United States, fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

‘‘They’re basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases,’’ Ahern told The Associated Press.

Ahern said the Mexican officials - whom he didn’t name - are being interviewed and their cases are under review for possible asylum.

In the most recent high-level assassination, a top-ranking official on a local Mexican police force was shot more than 50 times and killed. Drug-related violence killed more than 2,500 people last year alone in Mexico.

‘‘It’s almost like a military fight,’’ Ahern said Tuesday. ‘‘I don’t think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border.’’

As the cartels fight for territory, this carnage spills over to the United States, Ahern said - from bullet-ridden people stumbling into U.S. territory, to rounds of ammunition coming across U.S. entry ports.

U.S. Humvees retrofitted with steel mesh over the glass windows patrol parts of the border to protect agents against guns shots and large rocks regularly thrown at them. At times agents are pinned down by sniper fire as people try to illegally cross into the U.S.

Mexico’s drug cartels have long divided the border, with each controlling key cities. But over the past decade Mexico has arrested or killed many of the gangs’ top leaders, creating a power vacuum and throwing lucrative drug routes up for the taking.

President Felipe Calderon, who took office in December 2006, responded by deploying more than 24,000 soldiers and federal police to areas where the government had lost control. Cartels have reacted with unprecedented violence, beheading police and killing soldiers.

In general, violence along the U.S. border has gone up over the years. Seven frontline border agents were killed in 2007, and two so far in 2008, one of whom was the Yuma sector's Aguilar. Assaults against officers have also shot up from 335 in fiscal 2001 to 987 in fiscal 2007.

All along the border, there have been 362 assaults against officers during the first four months of 2008, according to Border Patrol statistics. The pattern has been that when more security resources are deployed along the U.S. border, violence against officers spike in response.

Now, about 14,000 U.S. border agents work on the southern border, up from more than 9,000 in 2001.

The Bush administration has requested $500 million to fight drug crime in Mexico. Congress is currently considering the proposal.

BY THE NUMBERS

These figures treat the period of Oct. 1-April 30

• Assaults on Yuma agents, 2008: 23

• Assaults on Yuma agents, 2007: 115

• Yuma sector alien arrests, 2008: 6,431

• Yuma sector alien arrests, 2007: 28,829

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.