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.

A 30-year-old Mexican national was arrested while trying to smuggle 24 pounds of marijuana ashore on a surfboard, the U.S. Border Patrol said. The suspect was spotted Sunday morning paddling north about 200 yards off Imperial Beach, near the Mexican border. When agents ordered the surfer to come ashore, he threw a blue duffel bag into the water, the Border Patrol said. Agents went into the water to make the arrest.

Authorities have arrested two Mexican men on suspicion of smuggling 22 illegal immigrants by boat and dropping them off at a beach. Sheriff's deputies and Border Patrol agents went to the beach in Encinitas early Tuesday after receiving reports of people getting off a 30-foot boat. Authorities found 16 men and six women scattered in nearby brush and took them into custody. Agents also stopped the boat about five miles west of the coast and arrested two men on suspicion of human smuggling.

Bill Fraley knelt to examine the brown, pebbled soil, like an art professor studying a familiar drawing. "See those two fine-lines?" he said, passing a finger over two shoe prints, each with washboard rows of ridges. His hand moved to another heel print a few inches away. "And there's a doper lug," the heel imprint of a boot sometimes worn by drug smugglers. A few steps away, a 5-foot barbed-wire fence cut through the cactus and greasewood, separating the United States from Mexico.

A former Border Patrol officer said Thursday that constant demands to meet monthly arrest quotas led agents in the Inland Empire to cruise streets, bus stops and even medical clinics looking for illegal immigrants.

In one of his final acts in office, President Bush on Monday commuted the controversial prison terms of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting an unarmed Mexican drug smuggler who fled across the Rio Grande, away from a van loaded with 743 pounds of marijuana.

U.S. officials have expressed shock that a Mexican judge had freed a man imprisoned in connection with the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in California this year, according to a statement issued Wednesday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar was killed Jan. 19 near the Imperial Sand Dunes in Imperial County as he was trying to stop two vehicles that had entered the U.S. illegally.

A 28-year-old U.S. Border Patrol agent died early Sunday after a single-vehicle crash in rural eastern San Diego County, authorities said. The County Medical Examiner's Office identified the agent as Jarod Dittman. The Border Patrol wouldn't confirm his name, saying only that the victim was married with a child and had been an agent for more than a year. Officials say the agent had started his shift at midnight and drove a Jeep on Otay Lakes Road to his patrol area near Jamul. An hour later a second agent came upon the wreck and called emergency crews.