Bullets that hit a U.S. Border Patrol agent’s car in California Sunday morning may have been fired from across the border in Mexico, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“Mexican authorities were contacted as the shooting appeared to originate from the Mexican side of the border. Mexican authorities responded and initially took two subjects into custody, one of them was in possession of a handgun, the other was released,” the CBP said in a Monday statement.
According to CBP, a U.S. Border Patrol agent’s car was hit by the bullet while he was parked at the U.S.-Mexico border in southern California early Sunday morning. The agent had been on duty and inside his Chevy Tahoe truck when driver’s side back seat door was struck with bullets.
The incident happened around 2:15 a.m. PT “immediately north” of the international boundary, about a mile and a half west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry in southern California.
The unnamed agent in the vehicle was not struck or injured in the incident, and he immediately drove away.
The FBI also responded to the scene and is leading the investigation.
Assaults against U.S. border agents continue to happen along the U.S.-Mexico border. A week earlier, a federal agent was assaulted, and the agent fired his gun at his assailant, CBP said. The alleged assailant was taken to a hospital in San Antonio, Texas, for medical treatment, but CBP didn’t say anything else about the assailant’s immigration status or medical condition.
In late July, an agent from the San Diego region shot and injured a male suspect after several agents were attacked while driving all-terrain vehicles in a remote region near Imperial Beach, CBP said in a statement.
And in May, a Border Patrol agent based in Laredo, Texas, fatally shot an illegal immigrant in Rio Bravo after coming “under attack by multiple subjects using blunt objects,” CBP said.
In fiscal year 2017, the nearly 20,000 agents used firearms 17 times — down from 55 times in 2012.
There were nine firearm-related incidents in the first six months of fiscal year 2018, from Oct. 1, 2017, through March 31.
