Use of force at U.S.-Mexico border in the spotlight,
EL PASO, Texas — U.S. Border Patrol agents near Tijuana, Mexico, faced a choice as they looked out over the chaos at a crowd of migrants that included rock-throwing men as well as barefoot children: Do they respond with force — and, if so, what kind?
The circumstances at the San Ysidro border crossing Sunday were exceptional, but the question facing the agents was not. It’s a split-second choice more often made in the remote desert, far from cameras, where agents are likely working alone and encountering groups of people crossing illegally.
The agents’ response — firing tear gas into the crowd — triggered widespread outrage and rekindled complaints that the Border Patrol, bolstered by President Donald Trump’s tough talk, is too quick to use force, particularly when responding to people throwing rocks.
But use of force by Customs and Border Protection officers and agents is declining from a high during the 2013 budget year, government statistics show. There are high-profile exceptions, like the shooting death by agents of a 19-year-old Guatemalan woman who crossed the border near Laredo in May.
Still, experts say policies have improved following a major audit five years ago.
“There has been progress made — especially in getting officers better training and better equipment,” said Josiah Heyman, a professor with University of Texas at El Paso and director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies. “When I first started studying this, most agents had a gun and a baton. They didn’t have the choice to use anything else.”
Firearms were used 45 times in budget year 2013 compared with 17 in 2017, according to data from Customs and Border Protection. For the first 11 months of the 2018 budget year, firearms were used 14 times.
Over those 11 months, there were 743 cases of agents and officers using less-lethal force, like batons, stun guns, tear gas and pepper spray. These included 29 cases in which tear gas was used and 43 incidents of pepper spray.
Though the final numbers are unavailable, those figures represent a drop from 2013, during the Obama administration, when there were 1,168 incidents of less-lethal force, including 27 instances of tear gas and 151 of pepper spray, according to the data.