Border agents, Pinal County deputies airlift injured man to safety

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) - The U.S. Border Patrol often makes the news when it comes to migrant apprehensions and smuggler arrests. Other agency activities such as rescuing imperiled migrants in remote stretches of the Southwest border often go unnoticed.

That's why a Monday tweet by Chief Border Patrol Agent Jason Owens raised eyebrows. It includes a video in which Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue agents in Cochise County, Arizona, render aid to a migrant who fell on a mountain, hurt his leg and back, was experiencing respiratory distress and could not walk.

The video shows the BORSTAR agents who are trained paramedics place the injured man on a stretcher, attach a hook and send him and an agent up in a helicopter provided by the nearby Pinal County Sheriff's Office. The aircraft took him to an ambulance down the mountain.

Pinal County Sheriff's deputies in the helicopter assisted during the early morning rescue on Dec. 3, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman told Border Report.

Agents say it's not unusual for smugglers to abandon injured or exhausted migrants who cannot keep up with the group with whom they are traveling. The circumstances, age and nationality of the injured migrant rescued Dec. 3 were not immediately available.

In fiscal year 2024, the Border Patrol conducted 5,420 rescues. They included near-drownings in canals and the Rio Grande in Texas, mountain and desert rescues in New Mexico and Arizona.

In the El Paso Sector that includes Far West Texas and all of New Mexico, border agents conducted 981 rescues and encountered 176 deceased migrants in FY 2024.