A new review of federal documents reveals that after a high speed car chase in April a Somali national allegedly tried to run down several border patrol agents in Arizona.
In the report, Border agents say Ahmed Elni Abdalla drove up near a checkpoint in Amado, Arizona, but when agents approached his vehicle he sped away.
Agents engaged in a car chase pursuing the man and eventually boxed him in near Green Valley, Arizona, a town just south of Tucson.
Despite being hemmed in, investigators say Abdalla refused to exit his vehicle. As agents tried to break his driver’s side window to drag him out, the suspect gunned the engine and tried to run the officers down. The action caused agents to “jump out of the way in order to avoid being hit.”
The federal documents reporting the incident didn’t say if Abdalla was smuggling people across the U.S. border with Mexico, but last December another Somali national was apprehended for doing just that.
At the end of December it was reported that Omar Haji Mohamed had been apprehended at a border checkpoint in Arizona, near the Tohono O’odham Nation. Mohammed had two Mexican nationals in his vehicle.
Border agents maintained Mohammed had been hired by the Mexicans to illegally sneak them across the border and into the U.S.
Somali nationals have formed large immigrant communities in places like southern California, Minnesota and Michigan. They were granted temporary protected status (TPS) by the federal government in 1991 and have been residing in the U.S. continuously since 2012 and given relief from deportation through 2017. TPS has been granted to citizens of 13 countries due to civil war or natural disasters that have occurred or are occurring in those regions.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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