By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
President Trump was quick to exploit the death of a Border Patrol agent by suggesting – without evidence – that he was killed by illegal immigrants. Other conservative lawmakers made the same premature conclusion.
But a month after Border Patrol Agent Rogelio Martinez was found in a ravine in West Texas and later died, local and federal law enforcement said they still don’t know what prompted the death and added it may have been an accident. Martinez’s partner was severely injured and can’t remember what happened.
Culberson County Sheriff Oscar Carrillo told the Dallas Morning News that the men may have been hit by a truck on a nearby interstate.
“If this was an assault, believe me, as sheriff, I’d be the first one out there emphasizing safety in our community and with our deputies, pairing them up,” he told the newspaper. “But from what I know and see, that was not the case here.”
The theory that the agents were attacked began with the National Border Patrol Council, the border agents’ union. Chris Cabrera, a spokesman for the union, called Carrillo a “dingbat.”
“All these other theories, it’s tarnishing the name of our agents,” he said in an interview with the New York Times.
