The Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, is the largest law enforcement agency in the country, with nearly twice the staff of the F.B.I. Through the years, a small number of officers have succumbed to temptation and reached for a share of the millions of dollars generated in the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people across the southwest border. But a civil suit stemming from the March 2014 attack near McAllen, now making its way through the courts, is shedding light on a more sinister kind of corruption. Over the past four years, at least 10 people in South Texas have been victims of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping or rape — all, according to prosecutors and officials, at the hands of Border Patrol agents who suddenly and violently snapped.
In April, Ronald Anthony Burgos Aviles, 29, an agent in the sprawling 116-county Laredo sector, was charged with stabbing and killing his girlfriend and their 1-year-old son. Then, in September, another Laredo sector agent, Juan David Ortiz, 35, admitted to investigators that he went on a 12-day killing spree, fatally shooting four people working as prostitutes and trying to abduct a fifth.
As a result of a civil suit filed by the three women attacked by Mr. Manzanares, the Border Patrol has been forced to answer questions about its hiring practices, its ability to weed out disturbed agents, and whether there is adequate supervision of officers.
Sworn testimony and other documents filed in that case, as well as lengthy interviews the three women gave to The New York Times, provide an unusual window into a case that otherwise might have had little scrutiny. Mr. Manzanares never went to trial, because he fatally shot himself as soon as federal investigators discovered his crime and closed in to stop him.
The case goes beyond any one Border Patrol administration: President Trump has given the agency substantial reinforcements and a wider mission, but the attack on the Honduran women occurred during President Barack Obama’s presidency. Critics say the very nature of Border Patrol agents’ work — dealing with vulnerable, powerless people, often alone on the nation’s little-traveled frontiers — makes it easy for troubled agents to go unnoticed.