US ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata Killed In Northern Mexico

Thirty-two year-old Jaime Zapata, a U.S. ICE Special Agent posted in Laredo, Texas and on loan to an ICE attaché office in Mexico City, was shot and killed yesterday at about 2:30 in the afternoon on Highway 57 between Mexico City and Monterrey, near the town of Santa Maria Del Rio in the northern state of San Luis Potosi. The assailants are suspected Zetas drug cartel members. One other ICE agent, Victor Avila, was also wounded in the attack. He is in stable condition.

San Luis Potosi police say the agents stopped at what appeared to be a military checkpoint, a checkpoint Mexican military agents say doesn't exist in that area. When the agents stopped their blue Suburban, gunmen believed to be a part of the Zetas cartel, opened fire on the two men, shooting Zapata, who was in the driver's seat, in the abdomen and wounding Avila twice in the leg.

Source: Laredo Morning Times, Brownsville Herald