Three women attacked a 32-year-old man inside the U.S. border-crossing building at 3:30 a.m. on February 25.

A little earlier, this reporter passed a group of three screeching, belligerent women buying what appeared to be burritos on the Mexican side of the border. The women, in their early 20s, reappeared inside the U.S. Customs building shortly thereafter. They wandered about, seemingly looking for the correct line to get into. Eventually, they got into the non-compliant WHTI (Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative) line and apparently began to argue with a man toward the front of the line about their alleged “cutting” in front of him. A loud altercation broke out, with the women (seemingly intoxicated, said some observers) telling the man to “Shut the f*” up” and that “It’s a free country!”

The verbal assault by the females continued for about 15 minutes with no intervention by U.S. border officials until the women began to strike the man with plastic bags of burritos and tortillas. The baggies broke open and chunks of tortilla began to fly. At that point, about eight U.S. officials ran toward the altercation (some leaping the turnstiles action-movie style) to stop the females from assaulting the man.

Although only one of the females was restrained, handcuffed, and led off (to the cheers of several hundred working men in the WHTI-compliant line), the other two women were sent to the back end of the WHTI non-compliant line. The victim spent ten minutes wiping tortilla particles off his face, shoulders, and clothing.

Since the strict implementation of the WHTI documentation requirement several weeks ago, non-compliant border crossers have attempted to shorten their wait time by making such cuts in the line.