Using their government vehicles to ram cars is standard operating procedure in the US Border Patrol.

First, an excerpt from by memoir, “Against the Wall.”

In the few seconds that it took me to realize he was ordering me as a trainee to violate policy, the truck’s engine caught fire and began veering to the left of the four-lane interstate towards the median. He was headed straight for the Pine Valley Creek bridge, which spanned a four-hundred-and-fifty-foot drop to the bottom. It was not survivable.

“He’s going to drive off the fuckin’ bridge!” I yelled.

“No, he ain’t!”

“Fuck!” I yelled as I saw the truck’s hood fly open and block the driver’s view. He stood on the brakes, but the truck skidded as he was on the dirt and gravel median between the east and westbound lanes. There was no guardrail in front of him. I stood on the brakes and stopped within inches of the truck’s bumper, which created a large cloud of dirt that Jenkins disappeared into. Everyone in the bed of the truck jumped out and started running in all different directions.

“We need backup at the Pine Valley Creek bridge!” I yelled over the radio.

An old Campo agent and two California Highway Patrol officers showed up immediately as they’d been following along on the radio and had already started heading our way. We started rounding everyone up and sitting them near my car when Jenkins ordered me to stay with them while they looked for others. The Highway Patrol officers used their fire extinguishers and quickly put the fire out.

I looked at the people sitting before me, and all I could think about was what could have happened. They could have wrecked, going that fast in the old truck. Some of them could have fallen out because they were in the open bed. They could have gone over the side of the bridge, and then they’d all be dead. Some could have run over the side because they couldn’t see from the smoke and the dirt cloud or because they were terrified of La Migra. My mouth filled with saltwater and the glands in my cheeks began tingling. It took everything I had not to puke.

“We got ’em all, I think,” Jenkins said breathing hard.

“You think?” I asked.

“We got ’em all, Budd,” said the old agent who I did not know. “Next time this happens, next time a load crashes on you, you need to say over the radio that you’ve terminated the pursuit so that it is on record. You say, ‘I’m terminating the pursuit because the driver is driving erratically or dangerously. I’m stopping on the side of the road and have turned my sirens and lights off.’”

“Yeah, I didn’t do it soon enough. I should have done it once I realized we were speeding,” I said, not understanding his meaning.

“Fuck that, Budd!” he said. “You chase ’em until they crash. If you say that you’ve terminated the pursuit over the radio, and it’s out here where no witnesses are, then no one knows that they’ve already crashed. Hell, get up beside them and make them crash. Intimidate the fuck out of them. When you say that over the radio, sector dispatch has a recording of it. As long as it’s like this—late at night in the middle of nowhere, you can still pursue them. Wait a few minutes after you say you’re ending the pursuit, and then get back on the radio and say that you were looking to make sure the car did not crash when you suddenly came upon them crashed. That way you’re not responsible for the crash, the injuries, or any deaths, and neither is the agency.”

“But the people in the load vehicle know, right?”

“Yeah, but no one listens to wets,” Jenkins agreed.

“So, if I’m in pursuit and the car crashes, I just turn off my siren and say to sector dispatch I’ve terminated the pursuit?” I asked.

“Right. Then wait a few minutes, come back on the radio, and say you are going to drive around to make sure no one got injured. Then you suddenly stumble upon them,” Jenkins said.

“But what if someone is seriously hurt or dead?”

“Who the fuck cares? They’re just toncs!”

On the drive home that night, I thought about how thankful I was that nobody was hurt in that chase. I didn’t agree with my journeymen that night. I didn’t believe people should die for crossing a border legally or illegally. (pages 74-75)

This is not the training I received in the US Border Patrol academy, but it is the training I and most agents receive in the field by their training agents. The secret field training I received was how to do PIT maneuvers and other ramming techniques to make them crash. Some agents preferred collecting baseball sized rocks and keeping them at the ready. If a car with suspected undocumented people refused to stop for our lights and sirens, agents would pull along side of the car and throw rocks into the windows often making the drivers’ panic because they thought agents were shooting at them and then they crashed. Some died, but the agency was always quick with their illegal and secret coverup teams (Critical Incident Teams) to put all the blame on the smugglers, deport the witnesses and victims and control the narrative in the press.

This does not mean that all agents engage in this behavior. 

I did not, nor did I train any agents in this illegal conduct. But it is a practice that I have witnessed and seen in court documents for the past thirty years. Today, we are seeing this practice in various incarnations in cities with Trump’s mass deportation. It is not new. It is common. It is pattern and practice within the Border Patrol. 

January 29, 2020, Border Patrol agent Deliris Montanez was assigned to a stationary surveillance position in El Paso, Texas when agents claimed a smuggler crashed in a curve known to agents as “the deadly curve.” Border Patrol was quick to come out with blaming the smuggler: he was drunk, driving too fast, running from agents trying to stop him, refusing to obey lawful orders, endangering everyone’s lives. 

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Montanez witnessed the pursuit from her position. She watched as her fellow agents gave chase with lights and sirens, listened to them over the radio. The agent giving chase said over the radio that he was increasing his speed in pursuit of the fleeing vehicle. Once the car entered “the deadly curve” on Paisano Boulevard, it hit a curb, slammed into a tree and street light pole and then rolled. The driver’s breath smelled of alcohol, and the El Paso police report claimed he admitted to smuggling and fleeing the agents. 

The four passengers were from Ecuador. Edward Leonardo Solis was dead. One passenger had severe bruising and sprains. Another suffered vertebrae fractures in his spine. Marcela Naomi Palacios was somehow still alive with “fractures in her elbow, spine and clavicle, she had a lacerated spleen, air and fluid filled her lungs, a brain bleed, and brain swelling.” 

Agent Montanez was ordered off her stationary point to guard those who survived while they were hospitalized. For a month after the crash, management continued to send Montanez to guard Marcela as she remained in a coma, missing part of her skull and paralyzed on one side of her body. This deeply affected the agent, and she stepped forward.

Her fellow agents were denying to El Paso Police investigators that they had ever initiated a pursuit, claiming instead that the agent had “lost sight” of the car after seeing it take off from the border. This was the official statement given by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to reporter Debbie Nathan about the incident. But Montanez stated to El Paso investigators and the media that the agent did initiate a pursuit as she witnessed and that the pursuit was called out over the radio. When the speed became dangerous and they headed towards “the deadly curve,” a supervisor was required to terminate the pursuit. Policy dictated a supervisor was required to monitor all pursuits over the radio, and it demanded that dangerous pursuits to determine citizenship for illegal entry (a misdemeanor) be terminated when they violated traffic laws and posed a danger to anyone, including those in the load vehicles.

But no supervisor did this even after the agent stated over the radio that he was in a high-speed pursuit. Instead, the agent and the agency lied and claimed the agent was not in pursuit. In an interview I did with Agent Montanez in 2020, she stated that the agents claimed they never had their emergency lights on, yet she clearly saw that they did. They claimed they had lost sight of the vehicle, yet she watched as the agent with lights chased the car into “the deadly curve,” watched and listened as the agents controlled the narrative. El Paso police investigators only documented the Border Patrol agent’s testimony as fact and stated in the report there were no witnesses although their own report also stated a man said he saw the car hit the curb and go flying. They did not include Agent Montanez’ testimony. 

Montanez paid for that. She was already known as a whistleblower within the agency, and this explains why she was not aware of the “unofficial training” I and others received in the field. She ended up a being assigned to sector, sitting in a room with nothing to do, ostracized and labeled a traitor by her fellow agents. She ultimately retired. Nothing happened to the agents, no accountability save for the smuggler going to jail.

Border Patrol agents have gotten away with these dangerous pursuits all in the name of national security to determine someone’s citizenship because most occur down on the southern border. Americans have taken the approach of NIMBYism - Not In My Back Yard - to these dangerous pursuits. If they do not see it and it does not affect them, they do not care. 

What Americans are learning is that what happens on the border does not stay on the border, and that includes Border Patrol deadly chases, the coverups that ensue and the lack of accountability that follows. See this article for how agents in Rodeo, New Mexico chased a migrant smuggling load into heavy traffic causing it to hit and severely injure New Mexico State Transportation workers, forever disabling them as they drove to work.

CBS Chicago reporter Asal Rezaei discovered this recently when ICE agents more than fifty feet away shot a pepper ball into her car simply because she was driving past the agents. Then there is this video out of Chicago showing agents ramming a car before violently dragging the woman from the disabled car. (I shortened the video as it is extremely violent.) 

While witnesses are screaming, “HIT AND RUN, HIT AND RUN,” this is Border Patrol training and policy. It simply isn’t written down or taught in the academies. It is taught in the field, in the middle of the night. And there will be no accountability because the federal agencies have rigged coverup teams, the local and state police assist with these coverups and courts refuse to hold agents or the agency accountable. 

No amount of improved training will stop this. This is the training and has been for generations. For more evidence of these deadly pursuits and unofficial policies, see this 2019 in-depth report from the Los Angles Times and Propublica.

Notes:

• Budd, Jenn. Against the Wall: My journey from Border Patrol agent to immigrant rights activist. Heliotrope Books LLC, June 2022. ISBN 978-1-942762-93-5ISBN 978-1-942762-92-8 eBook.
• Nathan, Debbie. “Border Patrol agent speaks out about a high-speed chase that ended in an immigrant’s death.” The Intercept, February 28, 2020. 
• Mejia, Brittany et al. “Chasing danger: How Border Patrol chases have spun out of control, with deadly consequences.” The Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2019.