Three people died and others were injured Saturday evening after their vehicle fled from the Border Patrol on a lengthy chase across southern Arizona and agents deployed a spike strip on an interstate to bring it to an end.
The fleeing Jeep Liberty careened across the interstate into oncoming traffic, crashed into a tractor-trailer and bounced back into the median, where it caught fire.
Of the 11 people in the vehicle, two were pronounced dead on the scene and two were airlifted to hospitals, where another was pronounced dead.
The deaths add to a growing string of fatalities in the border surge that began under President Biden — but most of the others have involved drowning, exposure or car crashes that didn’t involve agents.
Saturday’s deaths came during an escape and chase, and presented the latest test of Customs and Border Protection’s use of spike strips to try to prevent or stop fleeing vehicles.
Agents first spotted the Jeep after it avoided a Border Patrol highway checkpoint near Three Points, southwest of Tucson. A CBP helicopter kept an eye on the vehicle, updating agents on the ground as the Jeep sped into Tucson, barreling through red lights, before getting on Interstate 19, then Interstate 10.
Forty miles north of Tucson, and about 50 minutes after the chase began, agents tried to stop the Jeep with a spike strip, or Vehicle Immobilization Device, and the vehicle careened on the highway.
High-speed chases in the remote areas of the border are becoming common as smugglers increasingly resist capture — and that means more instances where agents contemplate using spike strips.
Under CBP policy, an agent must deem the use of an immobilization device or offensive driving tactics “objectively reasonable and necessary” in order to fulfill their duties. Agents don’t need prior approval, but they are supposed to declare their intention before using it to give a supervisor a chance to call them off.
“VIDs and ODT may be used in situations where the law enforcement benefit and the need to immobilize the subject vehicle and/or otherwise end a vehicle pursuit outweighs the immediate or foreseeable risk of injury to involved subjects and others created by the deployment of a VID or use of an ODT,” the policy says.