Texas Border Patrol agents say the death of Agent Rogelio Martinez and the injuries suffered by his partner in remote Culberson County in west Texas over the weekend should be a wake up call that more is needed to secure America's southern border, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
"People need to wake up and realize that not everybody who is coming across the border is 'just looking for work' and is pure as the driven snow," Chris Cabrera, who heads the Border Patrol Council, the agents' union, in the Rio Grande Valley, told News Radio 1200 WOAI.
The circumstances of Martinez' death remain unclear, but it is certain that when they died they were pursuing illegal immigrants through the rugged desert near I-10 east of El Paso.
The two men have have driven into a culvert, or they may have been attacked by the illegals with rocks and stones.
But either way, Cabrera says Border Patrol agents are the subject of assaults far more than urban police officers, and a lot more frequently than Americans think.
"We are in remote areas, we face assaults every day, almost every other day our agents are assaulted," he said. "It happens quite a bit, unfortunately."
Cabrera and other Border Patrol agents who spoke with 1200 WOAI news agree with President Trump that a solid border wall would help cut down on the assaults, as would upgraded equipment, and more Border Patrol agents.
High turnover in the Border Patrol has become a problem as the Texas economy is surging, with record low unemployment, and people trained in security are in increasing demand by local governments, the federal government, and by private industry.
But Cabrera says the most dangerous thing facing Border Patrol agents is the 'fantasy' that is pushed by open borders groups that the people they deal with every day are 'families' and 'children' who are 'coming to the U.S. for a better life and fleeing persecution back home.'
He says more and more, the people who his agents deal with on a daily basis are dangerous criminals, many of them immigrant smugglers and drug traffickers who are associated with Mexican drug gangs and trans national criminal organizations like El Salvador based MS-13.
He says until policymakers realize that, U.S. Border Patrol agents will remain in danger.
PHOTO: U.S. BORDER PATROL