President Trump called it proof of the need to build a wall; Senator Ted Cruz said it was a “stark reminder” of insecurity along the border. To everyone, it seemed like a horrendous example of the dangers that border patrol officers face as they cover vast, remote and unforgiving territories. But a month after a middle-of-the-night incident in which one border patrol agent was killed and another, who is said to have no memory of what happened, was severely injured, no one seems to know how the men came into harm’s way off an interstate in West Texas, says the New York Times.
The Nov. 18 incident was initially thought to be an attack, perhaps by migrants or drug smugglers. But the FBI says it also was possible the men were hurt accidentally. Culberson County Sheriff Oscar Carrillo, who is helping with the investigation, seemed to favor that theory when he told the Dallas Morning News that the men could have been hit by a truck driving along the interstate next to where they were found. That hypothesis has angered the border agents’ union, whose leadership insists the men were attacked. A union spokesman called Carrillo a “dingbat” on his weekly podcast. The immediate, politicized reactions from Trump, Cruz and others have died down, as weeks have passed without any more clarity as to what happened.