Witness Describes Saturday Night’s Incursion By Mexican Police At Intl. Bridge

A man who said he was at the Cordova International Bridge during Saturday night’s incursion by Mexican Police described tense moments.

“In the middle of the bridge, as I was going down, I noticed there were two trucks there and there was just a lot of noise, a lot of uniformed people moving around and they asked us to stop the vehicles and turn the engines off,” the man said. He doesn’t want to be identified, out of fear for his safety. The two trucks were Juarez Municipal Police units. “The impression that they gave me is that they were driving fast. They had kind of like hit the breaks and kind of like skid to the side kind of against each other,” he said.

Customs and Border Protection officials confirmed two Mexican Police units crossed the border while pursuing two people. The two people had proper entry documentation and no cause for arrest, said Roger Maier, Public Information Officer for CBP. The two people were allowed to cross into the U.S.

Attempts to reach Mexican officials to confirm why the two people were chased were unsuccessful. Maier said the Juarez police officers were processed and sent back to Mexico.

The witness said he saw about 20 U.S. uniformed officers with their guns drawn at the time of the incursion. He said two of them stood next to his car. “Two different officers, with rifles, with shotguns, they were standing in front of the vehicles, by the mirrors, one on each side, using it like a shield. And asking us to stay down inside the vehicles,” said the witness.

He said he was inside his car, with the armed officers surrounding it for about two minutes, before they ordered commuters to abandon their vehicles and head to a building on the bridge.

“(We were) helping everybody because they were trying to go down there because there were kids running with blankets, there were just older people trying to go in one line, just wait there and be safe. There was a rifle on the floor just sitting there while we were running to get shelter…it was very unexpected,” the witness described.

Minutes later, the witness said commuters were allowed to go back to their vehicles.

A Customs and Border Protection official said Homeland Security Investigations is the agency in charge of looking into the incident. ABC-7 specifically asked if there were shell casings found anywhere on the bridge. Immigration and Customs Spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa, in a phone conversation, said she’d look into it.