Border Patrol sees spike in suicides

FORT HANCOCK, Texas (AP) — After a bad day on the job as a Border Patrol agent, Eddie DeLaCruz went home and began discussing with his wife how to celebrate her upcoming birthday. Then he casually pressed his government-issued handgun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

“It was the ugliest sound I ever heard in my life,” his widow, Toni DeLaCruz, recalled of that day last November. “He just collapsed.”

A month later, one of DeLaCruz’s colleagues at the Fort Hancock border post put a bullet through his head, too.

Suicides including these have set off alarm bells throughout the agency responsible for policing the nation’s borders. After nearly four years without a single suicide in their ranks, border agents are killing themselves in greater numbers. Records obtained by The Associated Press show that at least 15 agents have taken their own lives since February 2008 - the largest spike in suicides the agency has seen in at least 20 years.