Newly reported excerpts from Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s personal journal show him documenting suspected AK-47 trafficking and weapons-smuggling surveillance in the weeks before his 2010 killing, which later brought national attention to ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was recording suspected AK-47 trafficking and monitoring possible weapons-smuggling activity along the Southwest border in the weeks before he was killed in December 2010, according to previously undisclosed excerpts from a personal journal his family says was discovered hidden inside a box of tactical boots after his death.
The handwritten notes, reported by Just the News, offer a new glimpse into Terry’s work shortly before his killing became intertwined with the controversy surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, the deeply flawed ATF firearms-trafficking investigation in which agents deferred arrests and weapons seizures while attempting to build cases against higher-level traffickers. A Justice Department inspector general investigation later found that the operation created serious public-safety risks and that firearms purchased by suspects were allowed to leave law enforcement surveillance.
One journal entry dated Nov. 2 refers to a silver SUV Terry had been monitoring and contains the notation, “AK-47 in crate,” along with an indication that the FBI had been informed. Terry’s brother, Kent Terry, believes the entry was written in 2010, approximately six weeks before his brother was killed.
Kent Terry said his brother had intercepted a shipment of AK-47s about a month before the shooting but was instructed by supervisors to allow the weapons to continue across the border. That assertion is based on the family’s account and has not been independently established in the material released with the journal.
Another entry dated Nov. 16 shows Terry conducting nighttime surveillance with the stated objective to “confirm or deny wpns smuggling.”
An undated page appears to involve weapons moving from Honduras through Guatemala and into Mexico. Terry began one note with the unfinished phrase, “Determine how wpns are…” and separately wrote that an interdiction was needed “to reduce arms/criminal org” involving the Sinaloa cartel.
Kent Terry said his family cannot determine from the notes whether Brian had discovered something connected to Fast and Furious or was simply documenting routine investigative work.
“We don’t know exactly why Brian wrote those things. We don’t know if he was onto something or knew about something,” Kent Terry said. “That’s the question we’re trying to figure out – or if he knew about it and he didn’t know the depth of it.”
The circumstances surrounding the journal’s discovery have added to the family’s questions.
According to Kent Terry, the family initially had difficulty gaining access to Brian Terry’s home after his death. His father looked through the windows and believed the residence appeared orderly. When relatives were eventually allowed inside, they collected Terry’s belongings, with Kent taking some of his brother’s clothing because the two wore the same size.
Roughly a year later, Kent decided to try on a pair of unused tactical boots that had belonged to Brian. Inside the toe of one boot, he said, he discovered the journal taped in place.
“We just thought it was kind of odd that we found it in a pair of tactical boots, a brand new box of tactical boots,” Kent said.
Kent said his father later informed Dennis Burke, then the U.S. attorney for Arizona, about the journal. Not long afterward, the family found Brian Terry’s home disturbed, according to Kent.
“Like somebody was looking for something,” he said.
Kent also alleged that his brother’s personal laptop had been wiped.
“Not even the Hewlett Packard icon would show up,” he said. “And you can see where someone’s tampered with it in the back because some of the screws are missing.”
Those claims are allegations from Terry’s family. Burke did not respond to an inquiry from Just the News, and the report did not establish who, if anyone, may have entered the home or altered the computer.
The siblings also described an encounter they said occurred before the journal was discovered. Brian Terry’s sister, Michelle, said Border Patrol union representatives asked family members to meet in a hotel room following a memorial service and told them Terry had expressed concerns about his safety in three emails during the months before his death.
Kent said the representatives also suggested that the circumstances of his brother’s killing differed from the account the family had received.
“He goes, ‘but what they’re telling you what happened to your son really didn’t happen to your son the way they’re telling you,’” Kent recalled, adding that the representatives told the family: “We’re here to throw you a bone, but that’s all we can tell you.”
Kent and Michelle said the representatives later denied that the meeting occurred. The siblings maintain that at least 10 family members witnessed the conversation.
“Ten people can’t be lying,” Michelle said.
Terry was fatally shot Dec. 14, 2010, while serving with a Border Patrol Tactical Unit team in a remote area north of Nogales, Arizona. According to the Justice Department, Terry and other agents encountered a crew of armed men who had illegally crossed from Mexico intending to rob marijuana smugglers. One member of the group opened fire, striking Terry in the back and inflicting fatal injuries.
Two AK-47-style rifles recovered at the scene had been purchased by a suspect connected to Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice Department inspector general later found that the purchaser, Jaime Avila, had already been identified as a Fast and Furious suspect when he bought three AK-47-style rifles in January 2010, but ATF made no effort at the time to seize the weapons. Two were recovered at the Terry murder scene 11 months later.
Operation Fast and Furious began in ATF’s Phoenix Field Division in October 2009 after agents began investigating suspected straw purchasers acquiring large numbers of firearms believed destined for Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. Investigators ultimately linked more than 40 suspects to a trafficking network responsible for purchasing more than 2,000 firearms, while ATF seized only about 100 during the investigation.
The Justice Department inspector general concluded in 2012 that ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona shared responsibility for serious strategic and operational failures, including deferring enforcement actions against suspected straw purchasers despite clear public-safety risks. The watchdog also found little or no meaningful supervision from ATF headquarters during much of the operation.
The controversy eventually reached the highest levels of the Justice Department. Attorney General Eric Holder testified in May 2011 that he believed he had first heard about Fast and Furious only weeks earlier. Documents later showed that memoranda mentioning the operation had been sent to him beginning in July 2010, although Holder said he had not seen those references. Contemporaneous reporting on the memoranda fueled the congressional investigation. The Justice Department inspector general later said it found no evidence that Holder had been informed about Fast and Furious or its gun-walking tactics before Jan. 31, 2011.
The House voted in 2012 to hold Holder in contempt of Congress after the Justice Department declined to provide certain subpoenaed Fast and Furious documents following President Barack Obama’s assertion of executive privilege. The operation resulted in personnel and management consequences within ATF and the Justice Department, including reassignments, and the inspector general recommended further review of individual conduct.
Seven defendants were ultimately convicted and sentenced in connection with Terry’s murder. In 2022, Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga became the seventh and final defendant sentenced after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and receiving a 50-year federal prison sentence.
Favela-Astorga admitted that he was part of the armed robbery crew that entered the United States from Mexico intending to steal marijuana from smugglers. When Terry’s BORTAC team moved to apprehend the group, a member of the crew fired on the agents and Terry was struck. Federal prosecutors said the men at the scene were carrying four AK-47-style rifles and an AR-15-style rifle.
Despite those convictions, Terry’s family says the newly disclosed journal has renewed questions about what he knew before his death and whether his weapons-smuggling surveillance had any relationship to the federal operation unfolding in the same border region.
“Brian had 15 more minutes to go on a shift with a two-week furlough and then this happened,” Kent Terry said. “I’m not speculating on a conspiracy, but it just seems the timing seems all wrong to us.”
“It’s not even answers for us,” Michelle added. “We want them for Brian. He deserves the truth and deserves people to be put in prison.”
Nearly 16 years after the killing, Michelle said her brother’s commitment to public service remains central to how the family remembers him.
“He was a true, dedicated, American patriot. Brian loved this country, he spent his whole adult life protecting this country. From being a marine to a police officer to a federal agent. He does not deserve what happened to him.”
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