Just days before President Joe Biden's visit Sunday to the U.S.-Mexico border at El Paso, Texas, a Border Patrol agent was shot and injured in nearby southern New Mexico by a person in a suspected smuggling vehicle, according to federal officials.
The officer, whose name was not released, was shot multiple times Thursday, with the bullets hitting his bulletproof vest, reports The Albuquerque Journal, quoting a news release from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The agent had stopped the vehicle at about 11:25 a.m., after which shots were fired from inside the car. The officer returned fire as the vehicle sped away on New Mexico 146, north of Hachita. A few miles down the road, the vehicle rolled over and crashed.
Six people in the car were arrested, with two injured occupants being flown to a hospital in El Paso, just over 100 miles away, for treatment.
The agent, assigned to the patrol's Lordsburg, New Mexico station, was examined and released after the incident, which is under investigation by the FBI and the Office of Professional Responsibility with assistance from the New Mexico State Police.
State Sen. Crystal Diamond, R-Elephant Butte, whose district includes Hidalgo County, said that "while many details are still unknown, what is clear is that today one of our brave Border Patrol agents took a bullet for this country and our community."
Diamond said New Mexico's border with Mexico "poses a clear and present danger to our citizens, our law enforcement, and the migrants caught in the criminal enterprise run by the cartel."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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