Texas Monthly explains why Border Patrol was at the scene of the Uvalde school massacre:
"When Border Patrol radios crackled with a request for aid from local Uvalde police on Tuesday, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Agents often act as first responders to emergencies in their communities. The alert on Tuesday, however, was horrific: a gunman had entered Robb Elementary School.
"Customs and Border Protection agents were among the first to respond to the mass shooting, in which at least nineteen children and two teachers were killed. That response speaks to the outsized role CBP has in small towns near the border, like Uvalde.
"A CBP official told Texas Monthly that as emergency calls first came in, four agents with CBP’s Bortac SWAT team were investigating stash houses on the border to the west of Uvalde. The agents immediately responded, arriving at the school just before noon. Bortac (Border Patrol Tactical Unit) is CBP’s’s paramilitary force, an elite group of agents trained to exchange gunfire with cartels. Border Patrol agents not in the SWAT unit also rushed to the school, for more personal reasons: their own children were in the building."