Assaults on ICE agents reached a decade high in 2017, and assaults on Border Patrol agents have also surged in recent years, according to new government numbers that seem to back up agents’ claims that illegal immigrants are increasingly looking to fight rather than flee.
The new numbers, reported by Homeland Security’s inspector general, could even be underselling the problem, investigators said, because the government doesn’t do a good job of tracking incidents, and agents and officers don’t always report them properly.
But the report does signal renewed danger particularly on the southwest border, where agents say a surge in illegal immigration in recent years generally correlates with growing violence.
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