An illegal alien from Honduras has been accused of attacking a U.S. Border Patrol Agent who was trying to stop a group of illegal immigrants that had just crossed the Rio Grande.
The assault took place last week near the border community called Sullivan City, when a group of agents riding all-terrain vehicles were notified about a group of 20 illegal immigrants making their way north from the river, court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed.
When the agents caught up with the group, they all ran in different directions. One of the agents caught up with 23-year-old Kevin Alonzo Mejia Lopez, who began assaulting the agent, striking him multiple times before other agents were able to help their partner.
While the criminal complaint doesn’t go into detail about the assault, the injuries were significant enough that the agent was rushed to Mission Regional Medical Center, where he was treated for injuries to his face and leg.
The following morning agents interviewed Mejia Lopez, who at first lied about the encounter, then said he might have struck the agent, but claimed to not remember.
As Breitbart Texas has previously reported, assaults on Border Patrol agents are common along the Texas border. However, as officials with the National Border Patrol Council have stated in the past, the assaults are only prosecuted if the agent is seriously injured and hospitalized.
That reluctance to prosecute has caused much discontent among union officials, who in recent weeks have been meeting with congressional leaders that traveled to the border area.
One of the more dramatic assaults took place in May 2014, when a Mexican drug trafficker trying to avoid capture assaulted an agent who spent two weeks hospitalized. However, court records minimized the assault into a scuffle. In August 2014, trafficker Miguel Angel Andrade pleaded guilty to the drug charge, while prosecutors dismissed the assault charges against him, raising serious objections from members of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307.
An article by Breitbart Texas shows an escalating level of violence experienced by U.S. Border Patrol agents during 2014 at the hands of illegal aliens who have tried to take their weapons away, among other things.