Rise in deadly Border Patrol chases renews accountability concerns
WASHINGTON — Angie Simms had been searching for her 25-year-old son for a week, filing a missing persons report and calling anyone who might have seen him, when the call came in August. Her son, Erik A. Molix, was in a hospital in El Paso, Texas, where he was strapped to his bed, on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma.
Molix had suffered head trauma after the SUV he was driving with nine illegal immigrants inside rolled over near Las Cruces, N.M., while Border Patrol agents pursued him at speeds of up to 73 mph. He died Aug. 15, nearly two weeks after the crash; even by then, no one from the Border Patrol or any other law enforcement or government agency had contacted his family.
The number of migrants crossing the border illegally has soared, with the Border Patrol recording the highest number of encounters in more than six decades in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. With the surge has come an increase in deaths and injuries from high-speed chases by the Border Patrol, a trend that Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, attributes to a rise in brazen smugglers trying to flee its agents.
From 2010 to 2019, highspeed chases by the Border Patrol resulted in an average of 3.5 deaths a year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2020, there were 14 such deaths; in 2021, there were 21, the last on Christmas.
The agency recorded more than 700 “use of force” incidents on or near the southern border in the last fiscal year. Customs and Border Protection does not disclose how many of those ended in death or how many high-speed chases take place each year.
Crossing the border without documentation or helping people do so is full of risk regardless of the circumstances, and stopping such crossings — and the criminal activity of smugglers — is central to the Border Patrol’s job. But the rising deaths raise questions about how far the agency should go with pursuits of smugglers and immigrants, and when and how agents should engage in high-speed chases.
Customs and Border Protection has yet to provide Ms. Simms, a fifth grade teacher in El Paso, with an explanation of what happened to her son. She saw a news release it issued two weeks after the crash; officials say it is not the
agency’s responsibility to explain. She said she understood that officials suspected her son was involved in illegal activity, transporting immigrants entering the country illegally.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to die for it,” she said.
Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has a policy stating that agents and officers can conduct high-speed chases when they determine “that the law enforcement benefit and need for emergency driving outweighs the immediate and potential danger created by such emergency
driving.” The ACLU argues that the policy, which the agency disclosed for the first time last month, gives agents too much discretion in determining the risk to public safety.
In a statement to The New York Times, Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of Homeland Security, said that while “CBP agents and officers risk their lives every day to keep our communities safe,” the Homeland Security Department “owes the public the fair, objective and transparent investigation of use-of-force incidents to ensure that our highest standards are maintained and enforced.”
But previously unreported documents and details of the crash that killed Molix shed light on what critics say is a troubling pattern in which the Border Patrol keeps its operations opaque, despite the rising human toll of aggressive enforcement actions.
Early Aug. 3, a Border Patrol agent saw an SUV traveling slowly just north of Las Cruces with what appeared to be a heavy load, according to a report from the New Mexico State Police.
When the SUV swerved to avoid a Border Patrol checkpoint, on a lonely stretch of road about 70 miles north of the border, the agent and a colleague in a separate car started chasing it. They pursued it for about 1 mile before one of them “clipped the vehicle, and it rolled,” according to local emergency dispatch records. The SUV was carrying people from Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and eight of its 10 occupants were ejected. An Ecuadorean man later died, as did Molix.
The New Mexico State Police was among the agencies that responded to the crash. Body camera footage from a state police officer captured one of the Border Patrol agents saying: “Our critical incident team is coming out. They’ll do all the crime scene stuff — well, not crime scene, but critical incident scene.”
The agent said that he and his colleague would give statements to the team, which it would share with police.
Critical incident teams are rarely mentioned by Customs and Border Protection or the Border Patrol. There is no public description of the scope of their authority.
Luis Miranda, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said the teams consist of “highly trained evidence collection experts” who gather and process evidence for investigations, including inquiries into human smuggling and drug trafficking. He also said the teams assist in investigations conducted by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which looks into claims of agent misconduct and is akin to internal affairs divisions of police departments.
Another Homeland Security official, who was authorized to speak to a reporter about the teams on the condition that the official’s name was not used, confirmed another role the office has: collecting evidence that could be used to protect a Border Patrol agent and “help deal with potential liability issues,” such as a future civil suit.