Yesterday thousands mourned U.S. Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas who was murdered last month on the U.S.-Mexico border in the line of duty. Leslie Berestein and Sandra Dibble write for the San Diego Union Tribune:
Rosas, 30, a three-year member of the force, was patrolling alone in the Campo area after 9 p.m. July 23 when someone opened fire near the border fence. * * * As the cost of being smuggled across the border has gone up, the character of the organizations doing the smuggling has changed, agents say. Mom-and-pop human-smuggling groups who once led illegal immigrants north have been replaced by organized crime, the agents say. "You now have the same people who are pushing drugs across (the border) waking up to the fact that there is a lot of money to be made," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents Border Patrol agents. "These are not people who are very nice, to put it mildly," said Bonner, who worked out of Campo for three decades. Smugglers have become more aggressive, and attacks against Border Patrol agents have become more common. In January 2008, an agent from the Yuma, Ariz., sector was killed in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area when a suspected smuggler rammed his Humvee into the agent's all-terrain vehicle.
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