A border agent in West Texas died Sunday morning of injuries sustained “responding to activity while on patrol,” U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced in a statement. Authorities have not yet said how 36-year-old Rogelio Martinez was hurt, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and a border agents’ union official have suggested he was physically attacked.
Martinez’s partner is reportedly still hospitalized in serious condition; the pair were working in the CBP’s Big Bend Sector some 100 miles east of El Paso, Texas, when they were injured. The last border agent who appears to have been killed during patrol was Nicholas Ivie, who died in 2012.
Martinez was a native of El Paso.
