SAN DIEGO -- Two U.S. Border Patrol officers who encountered automatic rifle-toting Mexican soldiers who had entered the country illegally defused a situation with "an enormous potential for violence," an official said Friday.

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One of the agents was on his rounds in a remote, brushy area near Tecate, Mexico, when he spotted bootprints leading north from the international line shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, USBP Public Information Officer Ben Bauman said.

The tracks, which traversed an enclave popular with narcotics smugglers, led about 30 feet into the United States before doubling back into Baja California, Bauman said.

Calling for backup and scanning the area with his flashlight, the agent followed the footprints to the spot where the pedestrians had crossed a chain-link fence separating the countries.

He then spotted six to 10 men in black-and-tan camouflage, about 15 feet south of the border, and crouching in shrubbery and clutching automatic rifles.

The agent called out to them, and one came forward and announced that he and his comrades were members of a drug-interdiction unit attached to the Mexican army. The group offered no further information, Bauman said.

At that point, the agent and another Border Patrol officer who had just arrived backed off, left the area, and reported the incident.

The encounter with the foreign gunmen -- though apparently legitimate government personnel, they had improperly entered the United States -- could easily have turned hostile, Bauman said.

"There's an enormous potential for violence down there when people with automatic weapons cross into the country," he added. "It says something about the restraint of the agents that they controlled the situation as well as they did."

The Border Patrol contacted Mexican military officials, who confirmed that the gunmen were who they claimed to be.

"They assured us they would take care of it, and that it wouldn't happen again," Bauman said.

USBP officials withheld the names of the agents involved, citing agency policy.