Three U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have been wounded after exchanging gunfire with people “on board a suspected smuggling vessel” off the coast of Puerto Rico, officials said.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on"Worldwide Threats to the Homeland", at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. – A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent and a suspected smuggler died during a shootout Thursday off the Puerto Rico coast, authorities said. Other U.S. officers were injured.
Typically, drug cartels recruit poor fishermen from Colombia and Venezuela to transport large amounts of cocaine northward to the Dominican Republic where it is broken down into smaller bales and transferred at sea to waiting vessels manned by better-paid, sometimes well-armed Puerto Rican drug runners.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in testimony before a Senate committee that an Air and Marine Operations agent was killed and several other agents were “gravely wounded.” Air and Marine Operations employs about 1,650 people and is one of the smaller units of CBP, the largest law enforcement agency in the United States that also includes the Border Patrol. Air and Maine aircraft and sea assets to stop the illegal movement of people, drugs and other goods.
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