FBI: Border agents killed migrant after he grabbed weapon
(NewsNation) — A Mexican national who U.S. Border Patrol agents fatally shot this week allegedly charged at them with a “edged weapon,” the FBI said in a statement late Wednesday.
Manuel Gonzalez Moran, 33, had been taken into custody for illegally re-entering the country and was being processed by agents at the Ysleta U.S. Border Patrol station near El Paso, Texas.
“Once at the station, Moran later charged out of a holding cell past an USBP agent and grabbed an edged weapon off a desk in the processing area,” the FBI said in its statement.
Officers tried to subdue Moran with a taser, the FBI said, but began firing their weapons when nonlethal attempts to subdue him failed and he continued approaching them. He was taken to a hospital where he later died.
He was previously arrested in 2011 in Pueblo, Colorado, and convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, the FBI said. He served 11 years in prison and was deported to Mexico in May 2022.
Agents have had to use force 876 times so far this fiscal year, a 26% increase from the same period last year. Seventeen of those incidents involved a firearm, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics.
Assaults on Border Patrol agents are on the rise. So far this fiscal year, there have been 462 assaults on agents, a 9.5% increase compared to the same period last year.