Border Agent Is Reassigned Pending Probe

The U.S. Border Patrol said Tuesday that it has reassigned a supervisory agent to administrative duties after an incident in which an officer used his patrol vehicle’s public address system to amplify abusive taunts at hundreds of immigrants amassed along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Michael D. Gregg, an agency spokesman, said the officer, who had supervisory responsibilities on Sunday evening, when the incident occurred, will remain on paid administrative duties until an investigation is completed by the Office of Inspector General, an independent oversight body within the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, parent body of the Border Patrol, is part of the Justice Department.

Gregg declined to identify the agent or to say whether he was the one who may have made the insults.

“We’ve done some preliminary inquiries that have indicated that some of the allegations may be factual,” said Gregg, who declined to comment further on the matter.

A reporter for The Times and two other U.S. journalists were present along the border as the agent used his vehicle’s amplification system to harangue waiting immigrants for more than an hour, referring, in crude border Spanish, to Mexicans as “whores,” among other pejorative characterizations. The taunts prompted the waiting migrants to hurl their own epithets.

Such use of the public address system would violate patrol guidelines, Gregg said.

“Obviously, the Border Patrol is very concerned about this and wants to take steps to see the guilty parties punished and to . . . see that this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore,” said Ralph Paige, agent in charge of the inspector general’s office in San Diego. He said the investigation could take days or weeks.

Any agent found to have violated guidelines could face a range of sanctions, from a verbal reprimand to firing, Gregg said.

The incident occurred at a time when Border Patrol officials say their agents are increasingly victimized by violent attacks by rock throwers, thieves and others who amass at the border along with the undocumented crossers. Critics have said that the patrol officers sometimes provoke such attacks.

The taunts occurred in a particularly volatile region--the Tijuana River levees, west of the port of entry at San Ysidro, which have been the site of numerous shootings and other violence in the past year.

Each night, hundreds of migrants seeking to cross the border gather at the levees, facing a phalanx of Border Patrol guards and all-terrain vehicles.