Mexico Probes Offer of Reward for Killing of Any U.S. Border Agent

A state attorney general’s office said Tuesday that it has opened a criminal investigation of a man who offered $10,000 for the killing of any U.S. Border Patrol agent.

“The man is inciting violence. . . . This could lead to an international incident,” Ruben Dario, a spokesman for the Tamaulipas state attorney general’s office, said by telephone.

Carlos Ibarra Perez, spokesman for an advocacy group called the Citizen Defense Committee, held a news conference Monday in the border city of Reynosa and said his offer was a response to the slaying of illegal immigrants by federal agents and private landowners in the U.S.

“They [the Border Patrol] are massacring people,” Ibarra said. “And now we’re ready to defend ourselves.”

Tamaulipas officials suggested Monday that Ibarra, a retired oil worker, was not serious. On Tuesday, they issued a news release announcing a criminal probe into possible incitement to murder.

“Independent of the seriousness with which one should take the declarations of Mr. Carlos Ibarra Perez, in no way can we permit attempts to return to a system of self-defense in which everyone takes justice into his own hands,” the agency said in a news release.

Many Mexicans have expressed alarm over attacks on illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border, particularly at reports that ranchers in Arizona have begun patrolling their lands and arresting immigrants.