President Biden signed a new law last week sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), with a bipartisan group of cosponsors that included Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), that aims to clarify that violence against federal agents and employees can be prosecuted even if it is committed outside of the United States.
The new law is called the Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila Federal Officers and Employees Protection Act. It explicitly covers certain crimes against federal agents, employees, and their family members, such as murder, attempted murder, assault, and threats, according to a summary provided by the United States Congress.
On February 11, 2011, officials in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), sent Special Agents Victor Avila and Jaime Zapata on an assignment to retrieve equipment from Mexico City. While they were on the road, the Los Zetas cartel attacked them in their armored vehicle, murdered Zapata, and seriously injured Avila.
In a letter to former President Trump on April 22, 2020, U.S. Special Counsel Henry Kerner described “managerial complacency” by the individuals who had sent Zapata and Avila on the assignment.
Though in 2017 a jury in Washington, D.C. convicted the criminals responsible for murdering Zapata and injuring Avila, the federal appeals court for the D.C. Circuit overturned the convictions for murder and attempted murder on a technicality in early 2020.
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