Tribute to the Lost Border Heroes

The blue stone, bearing the names of the fallen, glistened in the steady rain as an honor guard marched across the plaza of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.

Processions by the guard opened and closed a Tuesday evening ceremony to honor the sacrifice of Customs and Border Protection officers.

The tribute, established 15 years ago, is sponsored by the National Treasury Employees Union. It is one of dozens of similar events sponsored by employee groups and law enforcement associations in Washington every year, and many are attended by senior federal officials, members of Congress and others who may disagree on policy and politics but join to praise those who safeguard the nation.

This year's ceremony came during the week that marks the fifth anniversary of Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Department of Homeland Security. CBP was created by the merger of the old U.S. Customs Service and parts of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Agriculture Department.

"Since then, our agency has changed, and our mission has been modified. But the underlying reality has not," Colleen M. Kelley, the union's president, said at the ceremony.

"Every day, front-line Customs and Border Protection officers take up arms to protect our nation. And this evening, we salute all of them and pay homage to those officers who have died in the line of duty."

Kelley was joined at the ceremony by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, CBP Commissioner W. Ralph Basham and Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee's subcommittee on management, investigations and oversight.

Chertoff recalled that he attended his first ceremony at the memorial three years ago. "I've had to make more phone calls than I would have liked" since then to comfort families who lost a loved one, he said.

Law enforcement officers who give their lives in duty make the "supreme sacrifice," and their families make "an everyday sacrifice" that never ends, Chertoff said.

The ceremony included a moment of silence for Luis Aguilar, a 32-year-old agent for the Border Patrol who was run down and killed in January while trying to place spikes to blow out the tires of a Hummer fleeing other agents in southeastern California. Mexican authorities arrested a suspected drug smuggler in connection with Aguilar's death.

The Vigil of Lights, as the ceremony is known, features the lighting of candles in commemoration of the 111 CBP officers who died in service to their country over nearly 220 years. The names of these officers are some of the nearly 18,000 engraved on the memorial's low limestone and marble walls, which encircle a plaza at Judiciary Square.

As Customs and Border Protection officers and National Treasury Employee Union members from around the nation stepped forward for the lighting of their candles, the names of the 111 deceased CPB officers were read.