The person who threw a large rock at Kevin McAleenan, the top U.S. border official, during a tour of Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector last week remains at-large five days after the incident, according to officials at the Homeland Security Department.
The department, as well as its U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol components, have “no information on the individual on the south side” who threw the rock, a DHS official said Monday.
CBP did not issue a statement at time of the incident and did not respond to a request for comment. San Diego Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott shared a picture on his Instagram account over the weekend about the incident.
“Violence on the border tonight. @customsborder Commissioner Kevin McAleenan visited the border wall where #caravan members have gathered the last several days to see the fortifications first hand. While conversing through the wall with people on the south side, someone threw a large rock at the Commissioner, narrowly missing him,” Scott wrote in the post.
McAleenan, who was visiting from Washington, has been touring the border in Imperial Beach’s Friendship Park and speaking to Mexican officials through the set of bars that make up the fence when someone threw a rock at him.
A local media outlet reported the commissioner took the rock with him afterward.
Following reports this month that members of the caravan were forcibly pushing their way past and throwing items at Mexican authorities guarding entry points from Guatemala, President Trump said any rock and stone throwing would be treated as a firearms incident.
“Anybody throwing stones, rocks — like they did to Mexico and the Mexican military, Mexican police, where they badly hurt police and soldiers of Mexico — we will consider that a firearm because there’s not much difference,” Trump told reporters. “Because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.”
He later said he was not advocating the military use firearms to respond to people throwing rocks.
“But if our soldiers or Border Patrol or ICE are gonna be hit in the face with rocks, we’re gonna arrest those people. That doesn’t mean shoot them. But we’re going to arrest those people quickly and for a long period of time,” Trump said to reporters during a press conference at the White House Thursday evening.
