Border agents in armoured cars

Reuters | October 11, 2005

US law enforcement officers have started patrolling a remote stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border in armoured cars after agents were shot at, pelted with rocks and rammed by Mexican smugglers in a surge of violence, authorities said.

The US Border Patrol and the sheriff's department in Yuma county, on the border with Mexico in western Arizona, bought two second-hand armoured personnel carriers in recent weeks following a record 167 assaults by Mexican drug and human traffickers in the first seven months of the year.

Smugglers fired on sheriff's deputies and agents six times during the period and pelted them with rocks on 104 occasions.

In August, stone-hurling Mexican smugglers downed a US Customs and Border Protection A-Star helicopter.

"Violent attacks have increased sharply in recent months, so we decided to acquire an armoured vehicle so as to better protect our agents," a US Border Patrol spokesman said.

He said the Yuma sector Border Patrol acquired a 3855 kg armoured car from the Baltimore Police Department, and plan to use it for patrols in the remote desert region as soon as it has been refitted.

A spokesman for the Yuma County Sheriff's department said deputies began patrolling last week in an 8,165kg, British-made armoured car powered by a Rolls-Royce engine, which they bought second-hand.

Arizona has become a major thoroughfare for migrant traffickers and marijuana smugglers in recent years following a clamp down in security in border cities in California and Texas.

Last year, Arizona state accounted for around half the 1.2 million undocumented migrants caught crossing into the United States from Mexico.

Last modified October 11, 2005