MEXICO CRITICIZES U.S. BORDER PATROL AGENTS

Mexican officials are upset that U.S. Border Patrol agents crossed the
border into Mexico without permission while chasing drug smugglers
last week.

On Monday night, the Mexican attorney general's office, known as the
PGR, announced it was investigating the "probable incursion of North
American police into Mexican territory."

Border Patrol officials admitted the incursion on Monday.

The agents followed a fleeing pickup truck into the river "no more
than 25 feet across the border" Thursday afternoon, Robert W. Gilbert,
the chief patrol agent for the patrol s El Paso sector, said in a
statement Monday.

The incident occurred Thursday afternoon when Border Patrol agents
chased a marijuana-loaded pickup that got stuck in the Rio Grande near
Fabens. Police officials from the Mexican village of Guadalupe
Distrito Bravos said that when they arrived at the scene, they found
the agents on the Mexican side of the river and had a brief standoff.

a report of an abandoned drug-laden truck with their guns drawn. "When
we arrived (the U.S. agents) drew their weapons," Delgado said.

The PGR said it was told by the police officers that when they arrived
at the scene, they saw about 15 Border Patrol agents, who pointed at
them with rifles and were attempting to hook up the pickup to chains
to pull it.

Border Patrol officials said they were investigating. They said agents
retrieved 300 pounds of marijuana from the truck before Mexican
officials took over.

The city of JuA!rez issued a statement "condemning that authorities
from other countries enter a national territory without respect for
sovereignty."

City official Jorge Alvarez CompeA!n said Mexico should formally
complain to the United States.

Even though the intent was to stop drug smuggling, "The end does not
justify the action," Alvarez said.

Guadalupe police met with Mexican federal police in JuA!rez on Monday
to discuss the incident and review photographs allegedly taken at the
scene, federal police officials said. State police said they took out
1,441 pounds of marijuana from the truck, a 2005 Chevrolet that was
reported stolen in El Paso in May. The truck's two occupants fled into
Mexico.

In January, Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West accused Mexico of
incursion into U.S. territory after an armed standoff over another
drug-filled vehicle stuck in the river near Sierra Blanca.

Mexico denied West's accusations that Mexican military were involved
in that standoff.