Agent Honored for Putting the Brakes on Van

It was a nightmare on wheels.

The ancient battered van full of illegal immigrants was slowing down, then speeding up, then slowing down, with U.S. Border Patrol vehicles wailing in pursuit and startled drivers swerving and braking on busy Interstate 5 near Carlsbad.

And Border Patrol Agent James Ford knew what was going to happen next: The young driver finally bailed out of the fleeing vehicle. The vanload of terrified men, women and children kept going, rolling out of control toward a pickup truck stopped on the freeway shoulder.

“This ain’t the first incident that’s happened,” said Ford, who was honored Tuesday for ending the nightmare before it became a tragedy. Border Patrol officials named him Employee of the Year for the San Diego Border Patrol sector.

“We call it dynamiting the brakes,” Ford, 38, said in an easy Texas drawl. “They leave the vehicle in gear, they know it gives them a chance to get away from the vehicle. They know the agent is going to go after the vehicle to ensure the safety of people in the vehicle and the safety of the public.”

The agent who went after the vehicle in this case was Ford. His partner pulled alongside at 15 m.p.h.; Ford leaped from the passenger side of the Border Patrol van into the driver’s seat of the runaway van. Like a cowboy jumping from one galloping horse to another.

“Something like that,” Ford said quietly.

After a slow-motion moment filled with the roar of passing cars, sirens, the sobs of passengers, Ford found the brake pedal and stomped it.

“It seemed like it took forever to stop,” he said. “It probably didn’t take that long, it just seemed like it.”

In 5 1/2 years based at the Border Patrol’s El Cajon station, Ford has become accustomed to the chilling regularity of chases and the desperate variety of tactics used by fleeing smugglers. They push illegal immigrants out of cars. They jump out onto the freeway median. They abandon cars in reverse to send them rolling back at their pursuers.

But such events rarely got attention, until that day that agents refer to simply as “Temecula”: the June 2 incident in which six people died after a stolen Chevrolet Suburban crashed in front of Temecula Valley High School.

After an angry debate about Border Patrol chases, the agency has moved toward adopting a more restrictive chase policy. Some agents say that will make streets safer. Others predict it will push smugglers to take even more risks in hopes that gun-shy agents will not pursue them.

Ford declined to be drawn into that policy debate Tuesday, however.

“I couldn’t comment on the chase policy one way or the other,” he said. “That’s something the high-ups are dealing with.”

Ford tried to describe his emotions during the chase, which occurred on an evening in January of last year.

“My adrenaline was pumping,” he said. “My heart was racing.”

The runaway 1960s Ford Econoline van was a classic “deathtrap” of the kind favored by immigrant smugglers, he said, a “real sorry vehicle.” It had one advantage, however, that may have played a role in saving the 15 passengers from serious injury or death.

“The funny thing on this van: Usually when you open the door it will shut if it’s moving,” Ford said. “But this door, it swung all the way open; it’s up by the front bumper. That left enough room for me to jump in.”

One of the passengers, who were all illegal immigrants from Mexico, told Ford afterward that he had implored the 24-year-old driver to stop.

The driver, who ended up being sentenced to 150 days in jail for aiding and abetting an alien smuggler, told arresting agents that the only thing on his mind was getting away.