“This is right about the time traffic starts to pick up,” he said, sitting in his official vehicle on a recent Thursday afternoon.

On the river at dusk, nothing but the leaves rustling loudly in the wind can be heard. Inner tubes are stuck on trees, some homes are scattered throughout the brush, and the green grass almost glows once the sun starts to go down.

“This is where I grew up right here,” Cavazos said, pointing to a white brick house as he drives by. He used to fish here and worked as a farm worker in fields near the river with undocumented immigrants, he said.

“As an adult, you realize the danger and what’s really going on here that people don’t realize,” he said.

Border Patrol agents were the victims of several shootings in the Brownsville area on Dec. 30 and Jan. 4. The incidents are connected, according to the FBI, and could be part of an emerging pattern of violence against these federal agents.

“You don’t know what triggers the violence,” Cavazos said, but Border Patrol agents are aware of the dangers.

Agents face a whole slew of threats on a daily basis, everything ranging from spiders, snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, ticks and chiggers to stumbling across people in desperate need of medical attention, drug and human smugglers, drowning, being shot at and getting physically assaulted.
To complicate an already tense and dangerous job, the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 gang, was reportedly hired to assassinate agents to clear a path for traffickers.

The MS-13 is a violent criminal organization that originated among Salvadoran communities in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

More immigrants from El Salvador come through the Valley than anywhere else in the country, Border Patrol officials said. This creates the potential for more MS-13 related activity here than in other places. The agency has arrested 35 members since Oct. 1 of 2005.

“I wouldn’t classify MS-13 as more of a threat in the Rio Grande Valley than in San Diego, per se, but we do have to be cognizant of the fact that El Savladoran nationals are apprehended more commonly in the McAllen and Laredo area,” Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora said.

With the two recent shootings, agents have been concerned, but it has not affected their work, said Enrique Mendiola, a field operations supervisor at the Harlingen station.

“I haven’t seen that morale has dropped,” Mendiola said. “They are being challenged, and they’re up to the challenge.”

That doesn’t mean agents don’t worry, Cavazos said.

“That’s something we all dread,” he said.

As a supervisor, Cavazos said making the right decisions — trying to help the line agents do the best job they can and staying out of danger — is what motivates him.

“They’re aware of the dangers,” he said. “Everybody pretty much thinks it comes with the territory.”

The Border Patrol is a tight-knit group, Mendiola said. Agents depend on each other so much in the course of their work that they become like family, he said.

While most agents know that the majority of people they come across are looking for a better life, that may not always is the case, Mendiola said.

“It can go sour in a second,” he said. “You never know when that one guy is going to turn on you.”

Border Patrol agents love what they do, Cavazos said. Keeping watch and working to make people safer is exciting, he said.

“You don’t know, you just don’t know what you’re challenge is going to be that day.”