Federal border agency report on Uvalde massacre recommends policy changes

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent speaks to a reporter near the scene of a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde. (Credit: Sergio Flores for The Texas Tribune)

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The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency on Thursday released its internal review of Border Patrol agents’ response to the May 2022 Uvalde school shooting in which an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

In the 203-page report, the federal agency recommends that it change its policies to allow agents to respond to mass shootings in non-federal cases and to make sure that Customs and Border Protection agents are up to date with the most recent training and best practices to respond to these types of incidents.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers waited 77 minutes before U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived, rushed to the room where the shooter was located and fatally shot the gunman — a Uvalde resident and former Robb Elementary School student.

In a summary of the report, the agency said that current Customs and Border Protection “training on active shooter response procedures was insufficient for the active shooter incident at Robb Elementary School.”

The federal agency also said that its agents acted within policy and didn’t find any misconduct.

“The active shooter incident at Robb Elementary School was a profound tragedy and deeply traumatic event. The loss of innocent lives and the enduring emotional scars borne by the survivors, families, community, and first responders are immeasurable,” said the activating chief for Customs and Border Protection, Troy A. Miller, in a statement.

In June, former Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo and former district officer Adrian Gonzales were indicted on felony charges of child endangerment. A grand jury returned the indictments six months after being convened and more than two years after the massacre.

Since the shooting, reviews by the state and federal government identified an assortment of failures in leadership, communication and training that resulted in children becoming trapped with the gunman for more than an hour.