Border Violence

WOUNDED MEN CROSS RIO GRANDE, SENT TO EL PASO HOSPITAL

A group of people bleeding after being shot in Mexico splashed across
the Rio Grande into Hudspeth County on Sunday afternoon, officials
said.

A Hudspeth County sheriff's lieutenant and a Border Patrol official
said four wounded men running for their lives crossed the border west
of Fort Hancock.

Border Patrol spokesman Agent Ramiro Cordero said an agent spotted the
men and summoned medical help. Cordero said agents could see a truck
on the Mexico side of the riverbank.

"There was a rumor about a gunbattle with us (the Border Patrol). It
was nothing like that," Cordero said.

The wounded men were rushed in ambulances to a hospital in El Paso.
Names and the medical conditions of the wounded men were not
available. One ambulance transmission stated a man had been shot
multiple times.

The spillover comes as tensions have been high in the Fort Hancock
area because of the bloodshed across the border in the Valley of Juarez.

The Valley of Juarez, with its collection of rural farming communities
along the Rio Grande, is a prime smuggling point and a battleground
between forces working with Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa cartel
and the Juarez drug cartel.

The killings in the Valley of Juarez had appeared to slow down after
the Mexican army and federal police poured into the valley following
threats warning residents to leave or die.

During a community meeting last week, U.S. federal and local
authorities told Fort Hancock residents that they were working
together and were prepared if any violence crossed the border.

"We are on alert out there," Cordero said on Sunday. "We are looking
at everything going on and we are are talking to all the agencies."