Assaults against U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in the first eight months of fiscal year 2017 surpassed the total number of attacks officers sustained in all of the previous year.
CBP reported 592 assaults against its Border Patrol, Office of Field Operations, and Air and Marine Operations officers from Oct. 1 through May 31, according to data published Thursday. A total of 585 assaults were reported in the 12 months of fiscal 2016. That number is higher than each of the past five years, though previous numbers were not listed online.
Attacks on Border Patrol agents made up more than 90 percent of the total attacks. In the first eight months of this fiscal year, agents reported 558 assaults, while a year earlier, the same first eight months saw 291 attacks.
Despite the increasing rate of assaults on immigration and customs officials, the agency is using force — physical retribution — against attackers at a lower rate than last year. Officers from all three agencies used force in 274 instances compared to 361 times in the same time frame a year earlier. The majority of those instances were from less-lethal devices.
