Seven armed Mexican soldiers aboard a military Humvee were taken into custody early Friday morning on the Arizona side of the U.S-Mexican border near Yuma in what officials called an unintentional and non-hostile incursion.
The U.S. Border Patrol received a report about 8 a.m. Friday of a Humvee heading north near the Colorado River and County 14th, said Michael Lowrie, Border Patrol Yuma Sector spokesman.
Border Patrol agents went to check it out and Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine sent a helicopter, Lowrie said.
They confirmed that the humvee was within the United States, he said. They spotted the humvee about one quarter mile east of the U.S. Mexican border, which runs north-south along the Colorado River. They were on the west side of the Salinity Canal, an irrigation canal that runs parallel to the Colorado River to the east.
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Agents talked with the soldiers and determined they were from the Mexican army and that they were lost, Lowrie said.
They were apparently out doing military maneuvers and didn’t realize they were on the U.S. side, Lowrie said.
“They were disoriented and ended up on our side,” Lowrie said.
The seven soldiers relinquished their assault rifles and allowed agents to take them into custody without incident, Lowrie said.
They were transported to the port of entry in San Luis where officials ran background checks on each of them. None had criminal or immigration violations, he said.
At about 1 p.m. Friday, they were returned to Mexico, Lowrie said.
It is the second reported incursion in the last three months along the Arizona-Mexico border.
About 2 a.m. Aug. 3, four men dressed in Mexican military clothing briefly held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint on the Arizona side of the Mexican border on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation.
That incursion occurred near the international line south of Papago Farms in an area about 85 miles southwest of Tucson.
The agent was driving along the dirt border road looking for footprints when he encountered four men dressed in desert camouflage military clothes and armed with assault rifles. They pointed their rifles at the agent and yelled at him to stop and not to move.
