A Texas National Guardsman shot across the border into Mexico and wounded a man along the Rio Grande in the El Paso region on Saturday, according to The Washington Post.
The guardsman was deployed as part of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s security mobilization efforts across the southern border, dubbed “Operation Lone Star,” the Post reported on Monday.
The Texas Military Department said that the shooting is currently under investigation, in a statement made to Daily Caller News Foundation.
“On the night of 26 August, a National Guard Servicemember assigned to Operation Lone Star discharged a weapon in a border-related incident. The incident is under investigation. More information will be made available as the investigation progresses,” reads the statement from the Texas Military Department.
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The guardsman opened fire after witnessing three men on the Mexican side of the southern border attack a migrant group with a knife as the group was headed towards the U.S., according to a Border Patrol agent who was briefed on the situation, but not authorized to speak publicly, the Post reported.
Early reports from within Mexico have identified the wounded man as a 22-year-old migrant from Mexico, according to the Washington Post.
The man was seeking to cross from Ciudad Juarez into the U.S. when he was shot by the guardsman from across the southern border.
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From 2010 to 2020, six people died as a result of shootings across the border by Border Patrol Agents inside the U.S., according to the Southern Border Communities Coalition. 35 Border Patrol agents died in the line of duty from 2003 to 2019, 17% of whom were murdered, the CATO Institute reported.
Illegal migrant apprehensions at the border jumped from 99,539 in June to 132,652 in July, a 33% increase in the span of a month, according to U.S. Border Patrol.
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