Border 'Incursion': Why Did Mexican Federal Police 'Momentarily' Cross Into U.S. Amid Gunfire?

KTSM-TV:

A national watchdog group says the Mexican Government incursion that happened just a few miles outside of El Paso could be a major security threat to the nation.

KVIA-TV:

EL PASO, Texas -- Border Patrol officials are investigating an incursion by Mexican federal police into the United State on Thursday morning.

U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said armed officers with Mexico's Secretaria de Seguridad Publica federal police were in the incursion, which took place in El Paso, near the Border Patrol's Ysleta station.

The Mexican government, Border Patrol and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are investigating the incident. U.S. authorities responded to the incident.

An ABC-7 viewer contacted the station early Thursday, saying her son, husband and friends were hunting on the Rio Grande levy on the

U.S. side when men on the Mexico side fired shots, narrowly missing them. She said more men on the Mexico side drove up with automatic weapons and into to U.S. side. She said the armed men fired weapons and stole hunters' chairs and drove back into Mexico.

KTSM-TV:

"This is a crisis situation on the border and unless a citizen seems to run into it as the hunters did, the government is not really going to tell you about it," Tom Fitton said.

Fitton is the President of Judicial Watch, a national watchdog group in Washington DC. His organization won a fight with the government to gain access to information on border incursions and even obtained video of a border incursion that happened in El Paso in 2008. Fitton says, the data proves border incursions are happening at an alarming rate.

"We were shocked to find that the incidents involved shots fired on both sides of the border, unmarked helicopters invading U.S. airspace, drug smuggling and confrontations between U.S. Border Patrol Agents and armed members of the Mexican Military," he said.

Fitton told us the data also shows some of the incursions weren't accidents.

"The most recent incident, as reported by your station there, shows that it was not only purposeful, but criminal in the sense that they came over and seemingly robbed folks," he said.

It's a problem Fitton says is rising and could be dangerous to border security if ignored by Washington.

"What it means, and it shows, is the border is obviously un-secure and unsafe. With the recent restrictions regarding hunting on the border you have to wonder, who controls our territory? The Mexican Government or the U.S. Government?."

El Paso Times:

Mexican federal police momentarily crossed the Rio Grande into the United States on Thursday morning in an incursion under investigation by both countries, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman said.

The incursion occurred east of the Zaragoza Bridge while three hunters were on the U.S. side on the first day of dove season.

Agents arriving at the scene saw Mexican federal police crossing the river back into Mexico after they had been on the U.S. side, Mosier said.

Border Patrol officials said they did not receive any allegations that shots were fired across the border and had no information anything was stolen on the U.S. side. It is unknown why Mexican police crossed the border. The incident is under investigation.

A Mexican federal police spokesman could not be reached.