New York Times
(Editorial)
September 28, 2015
José
Antonio Elena Rodríguez was 16 when he was gunned down on a street in
Nogales, Mexico, in October 2012. He was shot several times in the back
by a United States Border
Patrol agent, firing through the fence from Nogales, Ariz. The boy was
unarmed; his family said he had been walking home from a basketball
game.
The
Border Patrol has insisted that the agent was defending himself from
rock-throwers on the Mexican side. But a federal grand jury on Wednesday
charged the agent with
second-degree murder. The indictment lends credence to what José
Antonio’s family and activists on both sides of the border have long
insisted: that this was another senseless killing by a member of an
agency notorious for the reckless use of deadly force.
The
agent’s union has asked the public to withhold judgment, a fair
request. But it is fair, too, for others to demand openness and
accountability from the Border Patrol
in this and other cross-border shootings of unarmed civilians, in which
basic information and answers have been sorely lacking.
In
José Antonio’s case, the agent’s claim of self-defense would seem
implausible to anyone who visits the spot in hilly Nogales where the
teenager fell. It is hard to
imagine him throwing anything across the road, up a 25-foot embankment
and then over the fence and hitting, much less hurting, anybody. A major
leaguer might be able to hurl a baseball that far, but a 16-year-old
boy with a dangerous rock? No.
There
are a number of other cases where border agents were said to have taken
dubious and lethal action. A critical 2013 report by the Police
Executive Research Forum,
a law enforcement policy group, seriously questioned the Border
Patrol’s policies on deadly force — it found that agents would
deliberately stand in the way of fleeing cars, to justify shooting at
them. It urged the agency to stop that, and to forbid agents
to shoot at people “throwing objects not capable of causing serious
physical injury or death to them” — that is, teenagers with rocks. It
said both such changes would be “significant departures from current
practice.”
Gil
Kerlikowske, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, which
includes the Border Patrol, took office promising greater transparency
from his troubled agency,
which continues to be dogged by reports of misuse of force and other
abuses.
He
has a difficult job in building the confidence of border communities
that have been demanding accountability and justice. A federal
indictment, with an overdue airing
of facts in one disturbing case, may be one step in that direction.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment