Texas mass shooting: Border patrol tactical unit has at times played high-profile role

UVALDE, TEXAS (NYTIMES) - In the sprawling distances of South Texas, sheriff's deputies, local and county police officers, Texas Rangers and Highway Patrol troopers, US Border Patrol agents, immigration officers and other members of law enforcement work together on a daily basis.

Along the more than 1,900km of border between Mexico and Texas, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies respond to one another's calls for backup and regularly conduct joint operations.

So it was not unusual that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol responded to the desperate request for backup from the Uvalde Police Department on Tuesday (May 24).

It was highly unusual, however, for ICE officers to be pulling children out of school windows, and for Border Patrol agents to play such a central role in response to a school shooter, firing the bullets that killed him.

The Uvalde police asked for tactical equipment when they called for backup, and members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, the agency's version of a Swat team, dropped what they were doing and went to the school, about a 40-minute drive from where they had been working on the south-west border.

(Even though the Border Patrol's mission is to secure the nation's international boundaries, it is allowed to operate up to about 160km from a land or coastal border.)

Ultimately - about 35 minutes after the unit members arrived at the school, Mr Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at a news conference on Friday (May 27) - it was a sharpshooter from the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or Bortac, who killed the gunman about 12.50pm.

At the news conference, Mr McCraw said local police had been in charge of the response and that not sending law enforcement officers into the classroom where the gunman was for more than an hour had been "the wrong decision".

Border Patrol created Bortac in 1984 in response to rioting at immigration detention facilities. Since then, agents in the unit have at times found themselves in high-profile situations.

In April 2000, it was a gun-wielding Bortac agent who seized Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who was at the centre of an international custody battle. The agent grabbed the boy from his great-uncle's arms after agents had forced their way into the house in Miami where Elian had been staying.

The little-known unit, headquartered in El Paso, Texas, has about 250 agents. Its members most often operate along the country's borders, conducting operations such as breaking into stash houses where smugglers hide drugs and weapons.

Most of the people that the unit targets are violent, with lengthy criminal records. Its agents have enhanced, Special Forces-type training; they typically carry stun grenades and hold sniper certifications.

They arrived at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday with three ballistic shields, which are designed to stop or deflect bullets and other projectiles.

Becoming a member of the unit involves a three-week selection process that includes constant physical and mental stress, and food and sleep deprivation.

"We are looking for an overall combination of toughness, heart, intelligence and integrity," Mr Mike Marino, a supervisory agent with Bortac, said earlier this year. "The goal is to assess in someone what is normally immeasurable. You have to get a sense of a person's true being."

Members of the unit also operate around the world and have provided training and supported military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The unit has been criticised for some of its actions, including its involvement in former president Donald Trump's efforts to quash protests against police violence in Portland, Oregon, in 2020, after Mr George Floyd's murder.

That June, Mr Trump sent 66 agents from the specialised unit, along with other federal law enforcement officers, to Pearland, Texas, for the burial service of Mr Floyd, a black man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Mr Trump also sent members of the unit to so-called sanctuary cities, where local police are instructed not to assist federal immigration enforcement agents. They were sent to help ICE officers with arrests of immigrants living in the country illegally.

Many saw the operation as a scare tactic, part of the Trump administration's efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

Although it is rare for the Bortac team to play such a central role in the response to a local crime, it has happened before.

In 2015, members of the team assisted with the search of escaped convicted killers Richard Matt and David Sweat in upstate New York. A member of the team shot and killed Matt, after the team found him hiding in the woods.

Many Border Patrol agents and officers with Customs and Border Protection, its parent agency, live in the Uvalde area, which is part of the 390km-long Del Rio Border Patrol sector.

About 160 agents and officers work out of the Uvalde station, which is about an hour from the US border with Mexico and has a traffic checkpoint.

Parts of the Texas border are popular crossing points for migrants, and Border Patrol agents - about 9,200 of them in the state and in their green uniforms - are everywhere.

Mr Raul Ortiz, the Border Patrol chief, said when his agents got the call about the Uvalde shooting at around 11.30am on Tuesday, between 80 and 100 of them - both on and off duty - headed to the school.

Chief Victor Rodriguez of the police department in McAllen, Texas, said Border Patrol works so closely with local law enforcement that it is considered another law enforcement asset in the community.

Most often, he said, the incidents that Border Patrol responds to along with local officers are related to immigration.

In a situation like the school shooting in Uvalde, Mr Rodriguez said, "all local law enforcement agencies react and respond to see if they can help".