Border Patrol Agents

A U.S. Border Patrol agent was fatally shot while pursuing a group of people in a remote valley about 60 miles east of San Diego, triggering a manhunt by federal, state and Mexican authorities, Homeland Security officials said Friday. Robert Rosas, a three-year agency veteran, was responding to an incursion Thursday night just inside the steel border fence when one or more assailants opened fire, authorities said. He died at the scene.

  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has undertaken an unusual campaign of sorts: warning migrants of the dangers of crossing the U.S. border illegally. As The Times reported Monday, agents have reached out to Mexican and Central American media to detail the dangers that face those who attempt to enter illegally, especially along the Arizona-Mexico border. Just how much of an impact the outreach campaign is having, however, is unclear. The number of people attempting to cross into the U.S. illegally has dropped dramatically in recent years.

It's a law enforcement truism. Any time you get two cops together over a cigarette you're going to hear complaints about the honchos who run things downtown. But the exchange on a recent afternoon carried more than the standard bitterness when a plug of a Fresno cop asked senior U.S. Border Patrol Agent John Crockford how many illegal immigrant lawbreakers he takes off the streets every month. Crockford, a white-haired man of 48, guessed it was between 70 and 80. "What do we do when you're gone?"

The federal government has tried just about everything to stop the flow of migrants crossing the border illegally. It boosted the number of Border Patrol agents, made punishment harsher, deployed drones and motion sensors, built and rebuilt fences. For years it has even quietly funded the dissemination in Mexico of songs and mini-documentaries about dangers at the border. Now it is using a more proactive tactic: Since last year, agents in Arizona have called Mexican and Central American television and radio stations and newspapers, asking for the opportunity to tell of the dangers of crossing illegally, particularly through the Sonoran Desert . The outreach, which was initially greeted with skepticism, is being embraced.

The body of a 22-year-old man was found by Border Patrol agents Tuesday in an isolated field at the southern end of Cactus Road near California 117 in Otay Mesa, police said. Enrique Peralta-Ramirez, 22, of Tijuana had been bludgeoned about the head, probably with a rock, police said. He was found about 7:50 a.m., officials said.

Two Border Patrol agents have been acquitted of charges stemming from a violent struggle with a man in custody, a confrontation videotaped by a security camera. The defense argued that the tape did not show the man, Erik Mendoza Rubio, taking aggressive actions against agents Robert Curtin and John Wallace. A jury deliberated for an hour Monday before finding the men innocent of charges that they violated Mendoza's civil rights.

U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered a tunnel Wednesday leading from a house in Tijuana to a parking lot near a pedestrian border crossing, authorities said. The tunnel, about 4 feet wide and equipped with a lighting system, was found by crews excavating another tunnel that was discovered last week about 50 yards west. Authorities do not yet know the tunnel's length or whether it surfaced in the U.S. The passage started in a house where authorities last year found yet another tunnel.

The day laborers who gather each morning on a Moorpark street corner and wait for work received a visit from the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service this week that ended in several arrests. Border Patrol agents raided the laborers' meeting place at the corner of High Street and Spring Road on Tuesday morning and arrested seven men for entering the country illegally, said Senior Patrol Agent Neil Jensen.

Border Patrol agents seized almost a ton of marijuana--a cache worth more than $3.1 million-- near Tecate Wednesday, authorities said. Agents spied a pickup truck with a camper shell driving across the border from Mexico about a quarter of a mile east of the Tecate port of entry at 6:15 a.m. When the agents attempted to stop the truck, its driver made a sudden U-turn and drove back toward Mexico, said Steve Kean, a Border Patrol spokesman.

The San Diego County medical examiner released the name of a man fatally shot by a Border Patrol agent after the two allegedly scuffled over a gun. The victim, Benito A. Gonzalez, 40, was killed Thursday after the agent tried to handcuff him, said Paul Parker, an investigator with the medical examiner's office. A records search identified him as an illegal immigrant.

Mitt Romney called the controversial Arizona illegal immigration law a model for the country, and blasted the Obama administration for challenging it in court. "I will drop those lawsuits on Day One," Romney said in response to a question on illegal immigration during a GOP candidate debate in Mesa, Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the bill, was in the audience. "I'll also complete the fence, I'll make sure we have enough Border Patrol agents to secure the fence, and I will make sure we have an E-Verify system and require employers to check the documents of workers," he added.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry had hoped to assuage concerns about his views on illegal immigration by winning the backing of tough-talking Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., but at his first event with Arpaio in New Hampshire on Tuesday he was confronted by a voter who said his record on in-state tuition for illegal immigrants in Texas had probably cost him her vote. Arpaio, who backed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the 2008 race, told voters here he was supporting Perry because "he's been fighting this battle as a governor.

Reporting from San Diego Three men were arrested south of San Onofre State Beach as they tried to sneak 741 pounds of marijuana into the United States from Mexico, authorities said, another example of the illicit trend of smuggling by sea. The three men were spotted in a panga-style boat by the U.S. Border Patrol, Oceanside Harbor Patrol and a helicopter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Aboard the boat were 32 bundles of marijuana, worth an estimated $444,600, officials said.

The claim by senior ATF officials that none of the weapons lost in the botched Fast and Furious sting operation were used in the shooting of a Border Patrol agent is not supported by FBI ballistics tests, according to a copy of the FBI report on the shooting. Last week, spokesmen Scot Thomasson and Drew Wade of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told The Times that the FBI had assured them that neither of the two Fast and Furious weapons found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry's death were the ones that killed the agent.

Two days after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was killed in December, the top ATF supervisors in Phoenix said in internal emails that weapons found at the scene in Arizona came from a failed agency sting operation. But nearly two months later, when U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) inquired about the origin of the guns, senior officials in Washington with the Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were evasive. Grassley asked whether the guns were "used" in the killing.

Reporting from San Diego -- A federal judge on Friday sentenced a Mexican drug smuggler to life in prison for running over a U.S. Border Patrol agent in 2008 while speeding across the Imperial County sand dunes to Mexico. Jesus Navarro-Montes, 25, swerved and hit Agent Luis Aguilar, 32, at about 55 mph after the officer laid down a spike strip in an attempt to stop the Hummer that Navarro-Montes was driving. The life sentence marks the end of a long and sometimes frustrating cross-border effort to arrest and extradite Navarro-Montes — who fled to Mexico and, because of a prosecutorial snafu, was able to avoid extradition for more than a year.

Authorities detained 23 suspected illegal immigrants Wednesday after a Border Patrol agent was struck in the eye with a rock during a confrontation in rugged canyon country, officials said. The 37-year-old agent, whose name was not disclosed, and a partner were pelted as they approached a group of about 30 immigrants east of the Otay Mesa entry shortly before 2 a.m., said Ron Henley, a Border Patrol supervisor. "One of the rocks hit one of the agents in the eye," Henley said.

A teen-age driver and one of her passengers were killed at the end of a high-speed chase that began late Sunday at the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in San Clemente and ended in a crash in Riverside, authorities said. All four occupants of the car, including an illegal alien from Mexico in the trunk, were ejected from the vehicle when it swerved off the road at La Sierra and El Sobrante avenues and rolled into a field, said California Highway Patrol spokesman John Anderson.

Reporting from Tijuana -- The three men crawled through a sewage-crusted drain and then jumped the border fence, determined to get into San Diego. They encountered U.S. Border Patrol agents just as determined to stop them. When the agents captured one man, they were pelted by rocks and sticks, according to U.S. authorities. In response, an agent shot one of the rock-throwers in the head, a fatal wound that knocked him off the fence and back into Mexico. The shooting Tuesday evening renewed the debate over the proper use of force along the increasingly fortified U.S.-Mexico border.