Agent Nicholas Ivie, 30, was killed early this morning while he and two other agents responded to an alerted ground sensor outside Bisbee in a remote area frequented by cross-border drug smugglers. A second agent – who has not yet been identified – was injured in the shooting but has been released from the hospital.
Excepted from a statement by Governor Jan Brewer, on Facebook.
By Gary P Jackson
One border patrol agent, Nicolas Ivie, was murdered and another wounded in a shootout this morning near a border patrol station named after murdered agent Brian Terry, who was a victim of Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s Fast & Furious fiasco.
This is a tragedy that was totally preventable.
Border Agent Brian Terry
From USA Today:
A Border Patrol agent was killed while patrolling on horseback near the Arizona patrol station named after Brian Terry, another agent killed on duty in 2010
Federal and state authorities launched a widespread manhunt along a remote part of the Arizona-Mexico border for three to four suspects in a shooting that left one Border Patrol agent dead and another wounded.
Dozens of investigators in helicopters and on horseback were searching an area as large as 20 miles for the suspects who allegedly opened fire on the agents when they approached to check on a tripped ground sensor.
The Border Patrol identified the slain agent as Nicolas Ivie, 30.
“It was basically an ambush,” said Cochise County Sheriff’s Department Commander Marc Denney, whose agency is assisting the FBI in the search and investigation.
Denney said no weapons have been recovered. It was also unclear whether the suspects were involved in human smuggling or drug trafficking through a rocky corridor, about five miles from the Mexican border.
Denney said it was possible the suspects fled into Mexico following the shooting.
“They had a little bit of a jump on us,” he said. “It is very rocky terrain. We’re hoping that they hunkered down somewhere close by so that we have an opportunity to find them.”
Gov. Jan Brewer issued a statement blasting the federal government for failing to secure the border.
“What happens next has become all-too-familiar in Arizona,” the statement says. “Flags will be lowered in honor of the slain agent. Elected officials will vow to find those responsible. Arizonans and Americans will grieve, and they should. But this ought not only be a day of tears. There should be anger, too. Righteous anger – at the kind of evil that causes sorrow this deep, and at the federal failure and political stalemate that has left our border unsecured and our Border Patrol in harm’s way.”
The shooting occurred shortly before 2 a.m., when three agents on horseback were dispatched to an area near Naco after the ground sensor had been activated, said George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council an association of 17,000 agents and staffers.
McCubbin said one of the agents was killed, another wounded in the ankle and buttocks and third escaped without injury. The wounded agent, McCubbin said, was recovering at a local hospital. McCubbin said the agents were assigned to the Border Patrol station re-named just two weeks ago in honor of Agent Brian Terry.
Terry was slain in the same general area in December 2010, an incident that triggered congressional and Justice Department inquiries into a botched gun trafficking operation which allowed 2,000 firearms to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartel enforcers and other criminals. Two guns from that operation, known as Fast and Furious, were found at the scene of Terry’s murder. But the weapon used to kill Terry has not yet been identified.
McCubbin said early reports of Tuesday’s incident did not indicate that weapons were recovered or that suspects had been arrested.
“Unless guns are recovered, any suggestion that this incident is somehow linked to Fast and Furious is total speculation,” McCubbin said. “But being that this occurred in the same general area brings back a lot of sad memories.”
The Brian Terry Station, formerly called the Naco Station, is located in Bisbee, in southeast Arizona about 210 miles from Phoenix.
Tuesday’s shootings came two weeks after the release of a federal inquiry into Fast and Furious, an inquiry prompted by Terry’s 2010 murder.
As recently as last month, federal investigators expressed deep concern that 1,300 of the 2,000 weapons— many of them Ak-47 assault rifles — had not been recovered.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who helped launch the investigation into the flawed gun trafficking operation, said there is “no way to know at this point how the agent was killed” Tuesday.
“But because of Operation Fast and Furious, we’ll wonder for years if the guns used in any killing along the border were part of an ill-advised gunwalking strategy sanctioned by the federal government. It’s a sad commentary.”
Terry was the last Border Patrol agent killed by gunfire, but four others have died since then in traffic accidents, showing how treacherous the job and the terrain can be.
Agents Eduardo Rojas and Hector Clark were killed in May 2011, when they were tracking a group of illegal immigrants and their vehicle was struck by a freight train near Gila Bend, Ariz., according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a web site that tracks law enforcement deaths around the country.
Another agent was killed in a crash in July while patrolling near the border on an all-terrain vehicle near Fort Hancock, Texas, according to Officer Down website. A fourth was killed in July while assisting a disabled motorist on U.S. 90 near Cline, Texas.
More here, with video.
Governor Brewer has it right, while we mourn, we also must get angry. Even if the gun used to murder Agent Ivie wasn’t from Obama’s Fast & Furious, it’s Obama’s laxed border security, and coddling of illegal aliens that facilitated these murders and all of the violence along our southern border.
We must demand our next President secure the border and do something about forcing the illegals to leave our country. There is a real war going on all around our border, and the Obama regime is doing nothing to stop the violence.
From Senator John McCain:
My statement on the shooting of US Border Patrol agents in southern #Arizona this morning: mccain.senate.gov/public/index.c…
—
John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) October 02, 2012
Early this morning, agents from the U.S. Border Patrol were involved in a shooting near Naco, Arizona. Initial reports indicate that one agent was killed and another seriously injured.
While the investigation is still in its early stages, today’s events are a tragic reminder of the threats that Border Patrol agents face every day in the line of duty. Our thoughts and prayers are with these agents, their families, and all those in the Border Patrol community.
Once again, thoughts and prayers are certainly in order, but we must demand action. We need to put troops on our border with realistic rules of engagement, that will not only stop illegals from entering our country, but put an end to the violence that has been terrorizing border states for years.
Anything less is totally unacceptable.