Arizona border too dangerous for unarmed Guardsmen

Arizona's border is dangerous. Too dangerous a place to station unarmed National Guard troops. An early January incident in which Guard troops withdrew from a border observation post when approached by armed men underscored what residents have known for years - violence and danger are common along the 377-mile Arizona border.

Heavily armed smugglers bring in drugs, rock-throwing immigrants and bandits who prey on the border crossers themselves. Smuggling vehicles travel at high speeds. Assaults on agents, from thrown rocks to shootings to attempts to run them down, climbed from 146 in the 2004 fiscal year to 213 in the 2006 fiscal year, in the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which covers most of the Arizona-Mexico border.

Ten agents in the Tucson sector were shot at in fiscal 2006, though none were hit. Since the National Guard incident, a Border Patrol agent fatally shot a Mexican migrant who allegedly attacked him with a rock near the border community of Naco. Most recently, unknown assailants threw rocks at a Guard border observation post, breaking two windows on a Guard vehicle. No one was injured.