On Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep talks to Arizona Republic reporter Bob Ortega about that paper’s ongoing investigation into the use of force by Border Patrol agents, and the secrecy with which the agency cloaks their investigations.
Curiously, there’s no transcript of the story, so I can’t copy any of it to post here. There is, however, the audio recording. It’s worth a listen if you’ve got nine minutes.
Also, there’s this video of an incident that took place under the black bridge that links El Paso to Juarez.
The Washington Monthly published a report on Border Patrol cross-border violence. They say this about the El Paso – Juarez shooting:
Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca was a small-framed fifteen-year-old who loved soccer and wanted to be a police officer when he grew up. He lived in a humble three-room cinderblock house on the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico, with his mother, brother, and two sisters.
On June 6, 2010, Hernandez went with his brother to pick up his paycheck at a furniture factory near a concrete canal that contains the Rio Grande as it passes along the border between Juarez and El Paso, Texas. Meanwhile, as captured on an eyewitness video, Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. was patrolling the U.S. side of the border on bicycle when he spotted a handful of Mexican men trying to cross into the United States.
Mesa quickly dumped his bike and ran for one of them, grabbing him by the hair. The others began throwing rocks at Mesa as they retreated back toward Mexico. Mesa drew his weapon and fired two rounds across the border into Mexico. He missed the fleeing men but hit Hernandez, who was watching the scene from under a concrete bridge about fifty yards away, in Juarez.
According to the Mexican forensic report, Hernandez was shot through the left eye, suffering “a direct laceration to the brain, which … caused cardiac and respiratory arrest.” The medical examiner found “no evidence of a fight or struggle and concluded that the victim was surprised by the assailant eliminating any possibility to defend himself or flee.”
Though Mesa never claimed that he was struck by a rock, he said in a Border Patrol press release that he fired his weapon in self-defense. He also claimed that Hernandez was among the group of men throwing rocks. However, Cristobal Galindo, an attorney retained by the Hernandez family, says that he has seen additional tapes—one from a second eyewitness and one from a CBP surveillance camera—and neither of them show Hernandez throwing rocks. In both videos, the rock throwers are simply running by him.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of the family charges that the Border Patrol agents denied assistance to the bleeding victim. “U.S. Border Patrol Agents arrived on the scene, the shooter picked up his bicycle and then they all left,” says the complaint. “No one took any action to render emergency medical aid to Sergio, leaving him dead or dying beneath the Paso del Norte Bridge in the territory of Mexico.”
Granted, the Border Patrol has a difficult job. But that’s the job, and shooting unarmed civilians in another country isn’t, or shouldn’t be, part of it.
And of course there are good, level-headed, men and women who wear the Border Patrol uniform. So why aren’t they standing up to denounce the thugs with guns in their ranks? Can we really believe that all the shooters were justified despite ample evidence to the contrary?