OUTGUNNED ON THE BORDER

Federal Agents Face Increasing Danger As They Try To Stem The Human Tide From Mexico

BROWNSVILLE -- Cecilio Banuelos and Blake Hanning are puttering quietly,
their boat braiding a white tail in the darkened waters of the Rio Grande.
They are out here most nights, slicing past Mexico, scanning the shores for
bandits or drug runners -- for trouble in all its shapes.

Peering into the darkness, the Border Patrol agents aren't sure what hides
behind the hulking shapes of shore. Smugglers lurk unseen. Children throw
rocks and bottles. Bullets splash in the murky water.

"We're easily outgunned," Banuelos says. "And we hear a lot of stuff out
here."

At a time when undocumented immigrants face greater risks trying to get
into the country, the federal employees charged with keeping them out are
also encountering more danger.

"The agents are increasingly facing rough customers," said Mark Krikorian,
director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. "They're
more likely to be armed, more likely to be desperate and more likely to be
willing to use violence."

A decade ago, immigrants curled into car trunks, crossed their fingers and
sneaked over the border into urban hubs such as El Paso and San Diego.
Border Patrol agents endured sneers and occasional rock hurling. But it was
mostly a cat and mouse game with few casualties.

Those days are gone.

The Border Patrol has more than doubled in size, spreading thick over quiet
farms and sandy stretches from San Diego to Brownsville. Immigrants,
desperate to skirt the wall of agents, have been pushed from big cities
into desolate terrain, where they plod through deadly heat, burning sands
and fast currents.

Migrants turn to "coyotes" -- hired smugglers who may be armed and
ruthless, as are the drug traffickers and bandits who haunt the border.

In March, Mexican soldiers on an anti-drug mission plowed through a border
fence west of El Paso and shot at Border Patrol agents on the U.S. side.
The Mexican government said the soldiers were new to the area and did not
see the boundary markers.

Three months later, an activist in Reynosa, Mexico -- across from McAllen,
- -- promised $10,000 to anyone who killed a Border Patrol agent. He later
withdrew the offer, but its message could not be erased.

Nerves are dangerously rattled.

When Abraham Gonzalez crawled out of the Rio Grande into the hot, dark
night May 21, he brought no gun or knife. The 25-year-old father of three
had worked his way north from Tabasco, Mexico, in hopes of finding a job.

Instead, he was gunned down.

According to the Border Patrol, Gonzalez attacked an agent. After a
struggle and several warnings, the agent opened fire, the Border Patrol
said. One bullet ripped into Gonzalez's chest; another wedged in his side.

The government is investigating whether the shooting was justified.

These borderlands are evolving -- but into what? More uniformed agents
arrive every year. Barbed wire, military floodlights and steel walls rise
in sleepy pastures. Death scratches the spine of the Rio Grande, stronger
with every season.

Krikorian argues that the U.S. government is partly to blame -- ordering
agents to block undocumented workers, even as the economy depends upon the
flow of illegal labor.

"We are culpable," he says. "We are luring people here, and leaving the
agents out to dry."