Hey, somebody fires the boat. >> A firearm, a pickup truck, a boat ramp on the Rio Grand, and a border patrol agent who fires his rifle without a camera running to record it. What's left is everyone else's footage, picking up the moment the shooting is already over. February 12th, 2025, just after 6:40 in the evening, agents from the Fort Brown station flex team are running ground surveillance east of the Veterans Bridge port of entry about 17 1/2 miles out, working an area barely 400ths of a mile from the Rio Grand itself. The mission that day is anti-muggling patrol, watching the river for movement, not expecting a firefight. It starts with a tip. A call from SpaceX security flagging unusual activity near the water. Agents follow it to a boat ramp off Highway 4 where they find a group of people occupying a GMC Denali pickup truck. CBP says the agents believe they're watching an attempt to smuggle firearms into Mexico by boat, a river crossing meant to move weapons south instead of people north. CBP's cameras have been standard issue for agents since 2021, worn at chest height, and the agency is upfront about their limits. The footage shows only a general line of sight, not everything an agent actually sees or reacts to in the moment. There's also a built-in 2-minute buffer, silent video that starts recording automatically before an agent manually activates audio meant to catch whatever happens too fast for someone to reach for the switch. That buffer matters here because what's about to happen moves fast and not every camera on scene is even running yet. An agent moves in on the driver's side of the truck, unaware yet that someone else in the vehicle is armed. Hey, I got the driver. I got the driver. >> Hey. Hey. >> That's when someone spots the second man, the one who isn't staying in the truck. >> Dearest. Dear. Dear to your left. Dear to your left. >> CBP's account says the rear passenger has stepped out of the Denali holding an Anderson AM15 rifle, moving around the vehicle as a second agent approaches from behind. That second [music] agent is the one who fires and he's the one CBP specifically states who wasn't issued a body camera that day. There is no camera on the person who pulled [music] the trigger. Every angle in the released footage belongs to someone standing nearby, not the man who fired the shots. Everything [music] from this point forward is reconstructed from everyone around him. Hey, >> agents scatter toward the sound. Still not sure how many people they're dealing with. >> Did you hit the bags? >> There's at least another body. Do y'all see them or no? >> Hey, hear voices. >> Show me your [ __ ] hand. Put your hand. Show me your [ __ ] hand on the ground. The boat. The boat. The boat. >> The boat. >> Yeah, don't worry about the boat. >> More agents arrive, drawn in by the gunfire. >> Hey, Co. >> What? The fire up. That's >> reds and blues. Reds and blue copy. >> The armed man is down. Agents [music] start locking down everyone else on scene before they turn to him. >> Hey, he's shot. He's shot. >> Yeah. >> Hey, provide aid. Get Get security. >> I got to get her in cuffs. I'm going to go ahead and put that to sweep the rest of the handcuff. Handcuff the police too. I heard the boat. Get >> on the radio. Abdomen gunshot coming out of here. You already did. You already did. >> Someone confirms what set this off in the first place. The moment that on paper turned a smuggling stop into a shooting. >> He came up with a gun, right? >> Yeah. He pulled out a fireman. >> And then it's not about the gun anymore. It's about keeping the man alive. A shift that happens in seconds. Agents moving straight from securing a weapon to fighting to save the person they took it from. >> I got the fire. >> Hey, you hot? You hot? I'm hot. >> Yeah, I'm hot. >> What else is there? What else is in here? >> No, no, no, no. We just got the driver out. It should just be him. >> All our guys are accounted for. >> Yeah, 10. We're secure. >> Hey, give me a give me a kit. Give me a kit. Give me a kit. Uh, we don't got >> Okay, it's through the belly button, out his his upper buttock. >> Agents relay everything they know back over the [music] radio while they work. What happened? Who's accounted for? What they're seeing on the wound itself. [music] It's the kind of information dump that happens once fast because whoever's coming to help next needs all of it at once. >> I found was just that one weapon. >> The other ones took off running, dude. with the bags. >> Can I get a condition on the subject? >> Subjectctor is conscious. Breathing. >> Uh, it's going to be a lower abdomen gunshot wound. >> If you could just start applying pressure. He's got an exit wound. Just put one of those um huge gauses on the back. See if you can stop the window. Hey, >> get your alley lights over here. Lights right here, bro. He's talking pretty calm and everything. >> Somebody hold the light for me, please. >> Then without warning, the man's condition changes. >> Get that shirt off. Who's got trauma shears? Give me a trauma shears. >> You're all right. You're okay. >> You're okay. You're okay. You're okay. 25. >> Hey, did he take the little >> I only saw him grab that one and I grabbed the driver. >> Where's the bags and [ __ ] No beds. >> I didn't have visual bags. >> From here, it's entry [music] wound. Exit wound. Whatever cloth anyone has on them, there's no medic on scene yet. Just agents improvising with rags, hands, and each other trying to slow the bleeding until someone with real trauma gear can take over. >> Give me your rag. You got a rag? >> That's back there. B >> pressure on this exit wound. >> Yeah. Give me another rag to get pressure on the exit one. Let's go. >> Pull security. >> Give me another rag. Keep his head up. Keep his head up. >> Who's got a No. Sorry, buddy. Give me another. Give me your [ __ ] barf or some [ __ ] bro. I need something to get uh pressure on his butt. >> He's bleeding on his butt right here. >> Is there more bodies? >> Nobody's wearing the river for now. >> Hold security on the river. Somebody keep security on these two. >> Driver. That's the driver. >> This driver right here. On me. On me. >> We pat him down or what? Yeah, I better down. I better put him down. >> Hey, give me SOMEBODY WHO'S NOT PULLING SECURITY to get pressure on this exit wound. [music] >> CBP says agents apprehend three additional people at the scene and recover the rifle. Others reportedly run from the area entirely, according to the agents own radio traffic. People CBP never accounts for in the footage that follows. With the wounded man being treated and the area searched, [music] the last job is making sure nothing gets lost before investigators arrive. [music] The weapon, the scene, the story everyone's going to have to tell [music] afterward. >> Where's the Where's the weapon? >> The weapon secured. Weapon. >> Make sure you get a photo of that [ __ ] >> Yeah. In a second. Make sure the EMS is in route. >> Yeah. EMS is in. >> You're right. [music] You're right. >> Yeah. Everybody just calm down a little bit. We got the scene secure. You got security. >> Agents keep pressure [music] on the wound until local EMS arrives and takes over. The man identified by CBP only as a citizen of Mexico. His name and age never released is transported to a hospital. Contemporaneous local reporting says he arrives in stable condition, though what happens to him after that is never confirmed publicly. No Border Patrol agent is hurt. Part of Highway 4 stays closed for hours while investigators process the scene. According to the Cameron County Sheriff's Office, CBP's Office of Professional Responsibility opens an investigation. So does the Cameron County Sheriff's Office independently working the same scene from a different angle. The FBI says it's pursuing a federal charge against the armed man under Title 18 section 111. The statute covering assaults on federal officers filed against a man who was shot by one. CBP says the case will eventually go to its National Use of Force Review Board, the AY's internal mechanism for deciding whether the shooting followed policy. what that board ultimately decides, whether the agent faces any consequence, and how the federal charge against the wounded man is finally resolved. None of it is ever made part of the public record reviewed for this case. The video itself isn't posted until April 25th, more than 2 months after the shooting, after both the CBP and Sheriff's Office investigations have had time to move forward without public scrutiny, nearly [music] 15 minutes long, built around an animated recreation CBP explicitly labels [music] not to scale, and two body camera angles that show almost everything except the one thing that started it. The moment the agent without a camera pulled the trigger,