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SAN DIEGO - Border Patrol agents are firing tear gas
and powerful pepper-spray weapons across the border
into Mexico to repel what the agency says are an
increasing number of attacks by assailants hurling
rocks, bottles and bricks.

The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that
innocent families are being caught in the crossfire.

"A neighbor shouted, 'Stop it! There are children
living here," said Esther Arias Medina, 41, who on
Wednesday fled her Tijuana, Mexico, shanty with her
3-week-old grandson after the infant began coughing
from smoke that seeped through the walls.


A helmeted agent on the U.S. side said nothing as he
stood with a rifle on top of a 10-foot border fence
next to the three-room home that Arias shares with six
others.

"We don't deserve this," Arias said. "The people who
live here don't throw rocks. Those are people who come
from the outside, but we're paying the price."

Witnesses in Arias' hardscrabble neighborhood
described eight attacks since August that involved
tear gas or pepper spray, some that forced residents
to evacuate.

The Border Patrol says its agents have been attacked
nearly 1,000 times during a one-year period.

The agency's top official in San Diego, Mike Fisher,
said agents are taking action because Mexican
authorities have been slow to respond. When an attack
happens, he said, American authorities often wait
hours for them to come, and help usually never
arrives.

"We have been taking steps to ensure that our agents
are safe," Fisher said.

Mexico's acting consul general in San Diego, Ricardo
Pineda, has insisted that U.S. authorities stop firing
onto Mexican soil. He met with Border Patrol officials
last month after the agency fired tear gas into
Mexico. The agency defended that counterattack, saying
agents were being hit with a hail of ball bearings
from slingshots in Mexico.

U.S. officials say the violence indicates that
smugglers are growing more desperate as stepped-up
security makes it harder to sneak across the border.
The assailants try to distract agents long enough to
let people dash in the United States.

The head of a union representing Border Patrol
employees said the violence also results from the
decision to put agents right up against the border, a
departure from the early 1990s when they waited
farther back to make arrests.

"When you get that close to the fence, your agents are
sitting ducks," said T.J. Bonner, president of the
National Border Patrol Council.

Border Patrol agents were attacked 987 times along the
U.S.-Mexico border during the 12-month period that
ended Sept. 30, the agency said. That's up 31 percent
from 752 attacks a year earlier, and it's the highest
number since the agency began recording attacks in the
late 1990s.

About two-thirds of the attacks were with rocks. Many
of the rest involved physical assaults, such as
illegal immigrants getting into fist fights with
guards.

About one of every four attacks occurred in San Diego,
and most of those happened along a heavily fortified,
10-mile stretch of the border starting at the Pacific
Ocean.

Agent Joseph Ralph estimates he has been struck by
rocks 20 times since joining the Border Patrol in
1987, once fracturing a shoulder blade. "You find
yourself trying to take cover," he said.

About four months ago, a large rock struck the hood of
agent Ellery Taylor's vehicle. "The only thing you can
think is, 'I'm glad that that wasn't my head.' There's
no way to see it coming," Taylor said.

In October, agents in California and Arizona received
compressed-air guns that shoot pepper-spray canisters
more than 200 feet. Agents already had less powerful
pepper-launchers that lose their punch after about 30
feet - even less if absorbed by thick clothing or
cardboard.

The Border Patrol says the pepper weapons are a less
lethal alternative to regular guns, but they have
caused at least one fatality. In October 2004, a
college student died after she was struck in the eye
by a pepper-spray canister that officers fired to
control a celebration of the Red Sox's pennant win.

Border Patrol SWAT teams along the 1,952-mile
U.S.-Mexico border are also equipped with tear gas,
"flash bombs" that emit blinding light and "sting
ball" grenades that disperse hundreds of tiny rubber
pellets.

U.S. officials say the new tactics may spare lives. An
agent shot and killed a 20-year-old Mexican man whose
arm was cocked back in March in Calexico, Calif.,
where rock attacks have soared in the last year. Two
years ago, an agent fatally shot a rock thrower at the
San Diego-Tijuana border.

No criminal charges were filed in either case.

Robis Guadalupe Argumedo, a seamstress in Tijuana,
said she has been startled by tear gas on four nights
since Aug. 7, when her 12-year-old son suffered a nose
bleed. That attack also shattered a window of her
neighbor's car.


Argumedo, 31, said she shouted in protest across the
border at a helmeted agent on Dec. 8 after opening her
front door to a cloud of tear gas. "He said: 'I'm the
policeman of the world and I can do what I want.'"

Benito Arias said his 19-year-old sister-in-law
fainted during an apparent tear gas attack about two
weeks ago. The woman, five months pregnant, was given
oxygen at the hospital.

His father, Jose Arias, fled with his wife a few
blocks away, where paramedics checked their blood
pressure. He said he sympathizes with the Border
Patrol because Mexican authorities do nothing to
prevent people from hurling rocks over the fence at
agents.

"This is a matter between government and government,"
said Arias, 75. "They have to work out an agreement.
We are innocent. What can we do about it?"

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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