Los Angeles Times
January 30, 2014
by Cindy Carcamo
SASABE, Ariz. -- On a windy day in southern Arizona's remote borderlands, Glenn Weyant had everything he needed to make music — a cello bow, a mallet and the miles-long fence dividing the United States and Mexico.
His method, like his music, was improvisational and low-tech: He inserted electronic equipment into an Altoids tin, turning it into a microphone. Weyant filled the tin with magnets and pressed it against the fence a few inches off the ground. Wires attached to the tin led to an amp and several effects pedals — the kind electric guitarists use — which allow him to manipulate sounds.
Desert scrub, mesquite and sun-bleached rocks would serve as his audience; sometimes they do double duty as instruments.
"Nobody thought of the border wall as possibly anything other than something to separate people," he said. "I transform it. I play it."
For eight years, Weyant has tapped, banged and stroked the fence to produce haunting, sometimes ethereal, sounds in a region he has called the "de facto militarized zone." Compositions can last a minute — or more than half an hour.
"I'm a border deconstructionist," said Weyant, a 50-year-old Tucson resident. "I want to deconstruct preconceived notions. What I'm saying is you don't need to be afraid of the wall. You have nothing to fear."
Weyant moved to Tucson 19 years ago when much of the border fence in southern Arizona was barbed wire. It seemed forbidden. He didn't know whether he could even touch it.
"Am I allowed?" Weyant recalled wondering.
Though people tend to stay away from the fence — at least on the northern side — it's not against the law to touch it.
The New Jersey native had been drawn to unusual sounds his whole life — as a boy he enjoyed listening to the hypnotic pattern of his grandfather's electric fan. One day in 2005 — a time of growing concern about illegal immigration and terrorism — he decided that he wanted to hear what sounds the fence could make.
"It was a symbol of fear and loathing. I wanted to transform it into something else … an instrument so that people on both sides can have open dialogue and communication," Weyant said.
He experimented with drumsticks, mallets, violin bows and cello bows. Sometimes he'd use sticks found on the ground.
In Nogales, he played a fence made of re-purposed helicopter landing pads, sometimes creating a staccato sound. He'd capture the noise from birds landing on top of the fence, and the sounds of cars and people passing through the port of entry.
In Sasabe, he created a delicate raspy sound when he put a violin or cello bow on rusty mattress wires ranchers had stretched between fence posts to keep their cattle from straying into Mexico.
The results, he said, were beautiful.
Weyant is more interested in creating effects than melodies. His recordings can sound like wind chimes or have the flute-like breathiness created by blowing across a bottle top. Other sounds resemble moans, whistles and clicks and suggest whale songs or the ambient noise on a New Age relaxation tape.
"Some people describe it as nails on a chalkboard," he said. "It can elicit a repulsion, fear, eeriness. It can be ethereal. It's something that can be expansive."
People who have stumbled across Weyant sometimes looked on from afar, unsure of what he's doing. Others have approached him and stayed for a private concert.
"Making the inhumane, humane and human," one person commented on a YouTube video of Weyant making music. "Bravo. Beautiful. Inspiring." In this recording, Weyant rarely touched the wall and mostly amplified the sound the wind created blowing across rocks and through the fence.
At one point, Weyant augmented the sound by playing a cello while wearing a zebra-head mask. His methods often defy explanation. He once employed a moose call, blowing into the whistle-like contraption while standing next to the fence.
For the most part, Border Patrol agents have left him alone.
"I'm a white male playing the border wall," Weyant said. "I'm aware of my privileged status."
Some agents have greeted him with friendly curiosity.
"Why are you playing a wall?" one asked.
Another radioed his superiors: "There's a guy playing the wall. Is he allowed to do that?"
A few agents have warned him about people on the southern side of the fence.
"Hey, you know they throw rocks," one told him.
"Usually," Weyant said, "when you play in a venue, you don't have people with guns watching you and one guy telling you that people on the other side want to hurt you." Still, he's never had any dangerous run-ins with people on either side of the fence.
Weyant, a former professor of journalism who is now a stay-at-home dad, said he gets to the border wall as much as he can, often once a month. He has given lectures about his music at various universities. He's collaborated with musicians who have incorporated his border sounds into their works. He sells his compositions for 99 cents to $500 but has given away some to humanitarian aid associations. He makes them available on his website, SonicAnta, or posts videos of himself on YouTube.
On the recent blustery afternoon, Weyant went to the border fence near the small town of Sasabe, about 70 miles southwest of Tucson. Behind him, long, parched grasses danced in the wind. Snarled mesquite poked from the sandy earth. Baboquivari Peak towered above. The rock formation sometimes serves as a compass for migrants who make the illegal trek north.
Crumpled water bottles, cans and plastic packages littered the desert — some of it detritus left by immigrants crossing from Mexico. Weyant has played some of the castoffs too, stroking them or tapping them against the fence or other objects.
Weyant said the border wall was an appropriate place to make music because it's haunted with stories.
"This section is where hundreds of people die," he said. "Did they come from Guatemala?"
Dusty handprints stood out against the rusty patina of the fence. "Was it just a kid who jumped the fence? So many stories," Weyant said. "There's a lot of mojo here."
In recent years, people throughout southern Arizona have seen the buildup of border security. They've seen sections of the fence morph from flimsy barriers into tall, fortified structures that tattoo the Sonoran Desert.
But few have heard the border change.
Weyant has. The sounds, like the fence itself, are often harsher than before.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, crews installed a fence near Sasabe made of industrialized steel columns set a few inches apart. Weyant slapped a rust-peppered bollard — one of hundreds poking out of the desert in military formation. The columns are full of slurry and aren't as interesting to play, he said.
He slapped the fence again. A dull thud followed.
"This stuff sounds dead," Weyant said.
He walked along the fence, past seemingly identical columns, until he came to one he had played many times before. He tapped it up and down with his hand, searching for a spot that resonated. He theorizes that the slurry deteriorates, creating air pockets that allow more refined sounds to echo.
He stuck on the Altoids tin with the amp wires. He found a discarded portion of the old barbed wire fencing and drew the cello bow across it.
The wind continued to blow and Weyant stopped playing as the gusts passed through the fence. It sounded like a howling coyote.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-na-ff-c1-border-music-20140130-dto,0,3650473.htmlstory#axzz2ru37xhZV
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Deaths will continue with or without immigration reform
Cronkite News
December 6, 2013
Brittany Hargrave
For nine years, Steve Johnston has toted gallons of water, food packages, clothing and blankets up and down Arizona’s rugged border terrain, leaving the provisions on immigrant trails into the U.S. in the name of saving lives.
While bipartisan supporters say that the U.S. Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, S 744, will solve the nation’s illegal immigration problems if passed by the House of Representatives, Johnston offers a stark, contrasting view.
“I’m convinced S 744 will kill more people,” he says.
Johnston, 68, is a volunteer for the Tucson-based humanitarian-aid group No More Deaths, which is among several humanitarian and immigrant-advocacy groups that oppose the immigration bill, in part, for what they call its lack of foresight.
Johnston says the bill will “stress (volunteer) capabilities” by increasing border-enforcement efforts in Arizona and further funneling migrants into the most dangerous routes in the mountainous terrain of the Sonoran Desert.
He bases his prediction on trends from the past. Border enforcement strategies have been linked to a migrant-death rate in Arizona that has dramatically increased since the state became the most common entry point for illegal immigration into the U.S. in 1998.
Johnston’s prediction is plausible but not inevitable, says Doris Meissner, director of the Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Bill Clinton.
“A straight-line analysis is that deaths have remained high in Arizona and the bill is unlikely to lower those numbers and may even increase them,” she says. “However, the whole premise of comprehensive immigration reform is to create a system whereby people come into the U.S. to meet labor market demands and would be able to do so in a safe and orderly fashion. That should reduce reasons why people try to cross the southwest border illegally and thus decrease the number of deaths.”
There are several components of the bill that could impact migrant deaths and humanitarian work.
Primarily, S 744 calls for spending tens of billions of dollars on greater border-enforcement measures. This includes doubling the number of Border Patrol agents at the southern border to more than 38,000; constructing 700 additional miles of border fencing; deploying aircraft; building watch towers; and mandating area-specific technology such as camera systems, ground sensors and drones.
Much of those resources would be targeted toward high-risk zones like the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which in the 2012 fiscal year made one- third of the arrests of undocumented immigrants and one-half of marijuana seizures nationwide. Arizona already has 318 miles of some kind of border fencing, according to the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson and Yuma sectors. The remaining 70 miles have environmental obstacles that act as natural barriers.
Arizona became the focal point for illegal immigration as the result of a concentrated border-enforcement strategy that began in 1993 when “Operation Hold the Line” beefed up security with manpower and technology in busy illegal immigrant corridors into Texas. The Clinton administration followed with “Operation Gatekeeper” in 1994, increasing enforcement in the busiest illegalimmigration entry point – San Diego, Calif.
The strategy was aimed at forcing those who hoped to cross into the U.S. illegally into mountainous terrain with weather that fluctuates from blistering hot in the summer to frigid cold and snow in the winter acting as a deterrent. But it didn’t.
Migrant crossings and apprehensions plummeted in California and Texas following those policy changes, but they dramatically increased in Arizona. In 1992, there were just more than 95,000 apprehensions in the Tucson and Yuma sectors combined. By 2000, that number jumped to more than 700,000.
The apprehension numbers have now dropped to pre-1994 levels, the product of increased enforcement, fewer jobs available in the U.S. and an improving economy in Mexico. Deaths have not.
According to the U.S. Border Patrol, death counts have fluctuated between 170 per year and 250 per year since 2005. During that same period, apprehensions in the Tucson sector have decreased by 73 percent. The bottom line: The death rate is rising compared to reported apprehensions.
Those numbers alarm people like Gene Lefebvre, who was active in the 1980s Sanctuary Movement and who co-founded No More Deaths.
“Whether enforcement is high or low, people will try to come across if they believe they have more opportunities here,” Lefebvre says. “Over the years, numbers (of apprehensions) have been driven by the U.S. economy and jobs, as well as poverty on the other side.”
He says an improving U.S. economy will lead to more illegal immigration and more deaths in the desert.
“(The government) projected that people would die, but what they didn’t project, what they didn’t count on, was the desperation of people,” he says. “People came anyway.”
Data indicate fewer people are trying to cross illegally through Arizona, but the desperation of the people who do come over explains why the death count remains high, says Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, a professor at the University of Arizona and program coordinator for the Binational Migration Institute. Those who make the trip take more dangerous routes as enforcement blocks easier access points, she says.
“We’re talking about people who are looking at the risk in a very different way than you or I would,” she says. “You and I wouldn’t want to go through the desert. Being with family is an incredible push factor for people. Overriding the deterrents of going through the desert are factors people face in their hometowns – they can’t make enough money to buy food or medicine for their family. They’re willing to take that chance.”
The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner has found more than 2,000 bodies of suspected migrants in its jurisdiction since January 2001. It handles more unidentified remains than any other medical-examiner office in the country.
Humane Borders, another humanitarian-aid group based in Tucson, has worked with the Pima medical examiner office to put together a map plotting coordinates of migrant remains using geographic information system (GIS) software. The map also provides information concerning common demographics of migrants who die while crossing the border.
Because of advanced levels of decomposition, not all bodies can be identified when found. Still, the bodies that are identifiable by age, gender and cause of death offer a picture of who the migrants are: Eighty percent are male. Exposure is the cause of death in nearly 75 percent of cases. More than 40 percent of bodies are found on the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation. Most of the dead were between the ages of 20 and 49.
According to Gregory Hess, the office’s chief medical examiner, the biggest problem working with hundreds of unidentified bodies per year is storage.
“The unidentified bodies don’t go anywhere fast,” he says.
After the investigation is complete and there is no positive identification, the office generally calls to have the bodies buried in the Pima County plot or cremated, Hess says. That can add up to thousands of dollars in costs per year to the county.
It’s tragedies like those that another component of S. 744 hopes to cut down. In addition to its focus on enforcement, the bill calls for construction of 1,000 distress beacons along nearly 2,000 mile-long U.S. – Mexico border.
Currently, there are 22 distress beacons in the Tucson sector and 24 distress beacons in the Yuma sector. Factors on where the distress beacons are placed include how remote an area is, how many agents are deployed in the area, number of immigrant deaths in the area and what technology is available to help patrol, says Nicole Ballistrea, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson sector.
Distress beacons were first installed in Arizona in 2002 and consist of tall red posts equipped with buttons that can be pushed in emergencies to call for help. The towers are solar powered and lighted at night. Instructions for pressing the button and sending a distress signal appear in multiple languages. The instructions do not say the beacon is connected to Border Patrol. After being treated medically, border crossers without appropriate documentation are deported.
The Tucson sector beacons have been activated about 180 times “over the last few years,” Ballistrea says. Other than that estimate, there is little information on how effective distress beacons are.
Johnston, of No More Deaths, approves of the distress-beacon component of S 744, but says he believes it could be improved if the beacons were equipped with cell-phone towers, so migrants in distress could use their cell phones in areas with poor reception.
“That’s the thing that will save the most lives,” he says. “Right now, migrants have to climb to the top of the highest mountain to get reception, and that’s very difficult. If the beacons have a cell-phone tower and use that ability, I’ll be in favor. Otherwise, it’s just a PR thing.”
The U.S. Border Patrol and local Arizona humanitarian groups have a checkered history. In the past, Border Patrol agents have ticketed humanitarian volunteers for littering after volunteers left water bottles and food out for migrants. Videos also exist of Border Patrol agents destroying the water and other provisions left out by the humanitarian groups.
Right now, relationships between the aid groups and the Border Patrol seem better, Johnston says. He attributes the improvement to Manuel Padilla Jr., who became the Tucson sector Border Patrol chief earlier this year.
“At the moment, the sector chief is sympathetic to our cause,” Johnston says. “Still, water is being destroyed. Blankets are still being taken away.”
Rubio-Goldsmith, who has studied the interaction between U.S. Border Patrol agents and border communities, says the Border Patrol has the difficult task of balancing justice and mercy.
“Border Patrol doesn’t like people going through their land, yet Border Patrol is there and they are supposed to help,” she says. “How they respond is kind of a mixed bag.”
Ballistrea says the Tucson sector Border Patrol maintains an “ongoing dialogue with multiple humanitarian groups.”
In instances where migrants coming into the country illegally become distressed, Border Patrol agents must “first and foremost act as humanitarians,” she says.
“Employees who disregard (their oath) and instead choose to violate the trust of the citizens they swore to protect will be held accountable,” she says. “Although (Border Patrol and humanitarian groups) may originate from different backgrounds, we share a common goal in saving lives. Agents are often called upon to shift from law enforcement to rescue mode in a moment’s notice.”
The best way to reform immigration policy is to work on economic policies affecting migrant workers and focus on the root motivator for why so many Mexican immigrants come to the U.S., Lefebvre says.
“There has always been a flow between the U.S. and Mexico,” he says. “People accepted that as a fact of life. Until 1994, (policies) were loose most of the time. When there was a tough economy, there were restrictions. When we needed workers, we encouraged them to come.”
In the past, workers would come from Mexico to work in the agriculture, construction or hotel industries. They would work for six months to a year, send money home and then go home themselves, Lefebvre says. Some came back and some didn’t.
“They preferred to live in Mexico, but came to the U.S. to save money for their families and for farmland,” he says.
S 744 would reform worker visas, and that change in system could stem the flow of illegal immigration, says Meissner, of the Migration Policy Institute. The bill, if passed, could also lead to more migrant rescues by increasing air surveillance, she says. It could lead to more humanitarian efforts from BorStar. If enforcement continues to increase in Arizona, the bill could shift primary migration patterns to Texas. And yes, she says, it could lead to more migrant deaths in the Arizona desert.
“It’s probably some of all of the above,” she says. “But, Border Patrol is quite successful at this point. Adding more policy on border enforcement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because border enforcement alone is not a viable enough strategy.”
http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2013/12/deaths-will-continue-with-or-without-immigration-reform/
December 6, 2013
Brittany Hargrave
For nine years, Steve Johnston has toted gallons of water, food packages, clothing and blankets up and down Arizona’s rugged border terrain, leaving the provisions on immigrant trails into the U.S. in the name of saving lives.
While bipartisan supporters say that the U.S. Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, S 744, will solve the nation’s illegal immigration problems if passed by the House of Representatives, Johnston offers a stark, contrasting view.
“I’m convinced S 744 will kill more people,” he says.
Johnston, 68, is a volunteer for the Tucson-based humanitarian-aid group No More Deaths, which is among several humanitarian and immigrant-advocacy groups that oppose the immigration bill, in part, for what they call its lack of foresight.
Johnston says the bill will “stress (volunteer) capabilities” by increasing border-enforcement efforts in Arizona and further funneling migrants into the most dangerous routes in the mountainous terrain of the Sonoran Desert.
He bases his prediction on trends from the past. Border enforcement strategies have been linked to a migrant-death rate in Arizona that has dramatically increased since the state became the most common entry point for illegal immigration into the U.S. in 1998.
Johnston’s prediction is plausible but not inevitable, says Doris Meissner, director of the Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Bill Clinton.
“A straight-line analysis is that deaths have remained high in Arizona and the bill is unlikely to lower those numbers and may even increase them,” she says. “However, the whole premise of comprehensive immigration reform is to create a system whereby people come into the U.S. to meet labor market demands and would be able to do so in a safe and orderly fashion. That should reduce reasons why people try to cross the southwest border illegally and thus decrease the number of deaths.”
There are several components of the bill that could impact migrant deaths and humanitarian work.
Primarily, S 744 calls for spending tens of billions of dollars on greater border-enforcement measures. This includes doubling the number of Border Patrol agents at the southern border to more than 38,000; constructing 700 additional miles of border fencing; deploying aircraft; building watch towers; and mandating area-specific technology such as camera systems, ground sensors and drones.
Much of those resources would be targeted toward high-risk zones like the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which in the 2012 fiscal year made one- third of the arrests of undocumented immigrants and one-half of marijuana seizures nationwide. Arizona already has 318 miles of some kind of border fencing, according to the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson and Yuma sectors. The remaining 70 miles have environmental obstacles that act as natural barriers.
Arizona became the focal point for illegal immigration as the result of a concentrated border-enforcement strategy that began in 1993 when “Operation Hold the Line” beefed up security with manpower and technology in busy illegal immigrant corridors into Texas. The Clinton administration followed with “Operation Gatekeeper” in 1994, increasing enforcement in the busiest illegalimmigration entry point – San Diego, Calif.
The strategy was aimed at forcing those who hoped to cross into the U.S. illegally into mountainous terrain with weather that fluctuates from blistering hot in the summer to frigid cold and snow in the winter acting as a deterrent. But it didn’t.
Migrant crossings and apprehensions plummeted in California and Texas following those policy changes, but they dramatically increased in Arizona. In 1992, there were just more than 95,000 apprehensions in the Tucson and Yuma sectors combined. By 2000, that number jumped to more than 700,000.
The apprehension numbers have now dropped to pre-1994 levels, the product of increased enforcement, fewer jobs available in the U.S. and an improving economy in Mexico. Deaths have not.
According to the U.S. Border Patrol, death counts have fluctuated between 170 per year and 250 per year since 2005. During that same period, apprehensions in the Tucson sector have decreased by 73 percent. The bottom line: The death rate is rising compared to reported apprehensions.
Those numbers alarm people like Gene Lefebvre, who was active in the 1980s Sanctuary Movement and who co-founded No More Deaths.
“Whether enforcement is high or low, people will try to come across if they believe they have more opportunities here,” Lefebvre says. “Over the years, numbers (of apprehensions) have been driven by the U.S. economy and jobs, as well as poverty on the other side.”
He says an improving U.S. economy will lead to more illegal immigration and more deaths in the desert.
“(The government) projected that people would die, but what they didn’t project, what they didn’t count on, was the desperation of people,” he says. “People came anyway.”
Data indicate fewer people are trying to cross illegally through Arizona, but the desperation of the people who do come over explains why the death count remains high, says Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, a professor at the University of Arizona and program coordinator for the Binational Migration Institute. Those who make the trip take more dangerous routes as enforcement blocks easier access points, she says.
“We’re talking about people who are looking at the risk in a very different way than you or I would,” she says. “You and I wouldn’t want to go through the desert. Being with family is an incredible push factor for people. Overriding the deterrents of going through the desert are factors people face in their hometowns – they can’t make enough money to buy food or medicine for their family. They’re willing to take that chance.”
The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner has found more than 2,000 bodies of suspected migrants in its jurisdiction since January 2001. It handles more unidentified remains than any other medical-examiner office in the country.
Humane Borders, another humanitarian-aid group based in Tucson, has worked with the Pima medical examiner office to put together a map plotting coordinates of migrant remains using geographic information system (GIS) software. The map also provides information concerning common demographics of migrants who die while crossing the border.
Because of advanced levels of decomposition, not all bodies can be identified when found. Still, the bodies that are identifiable by age, gender and cause of death offer a picture of who the migrants are: Eighty percent are male. Exposure is the cause of death in nearly 75 percent of cases. More than 40 percent of bodies are found on the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation. Most of the dead were between the ages of 20 and 49.
According to Gregory Hess, the office’s chief medical examiner, the biggest problem working with hundreds of unidentified bodies per year is storage.
“The unidentified bodies don’t go anywhere fast,” he says.
After the investigation is complete and there is no positive identification, the office generally calls to have the bodies buried in the Pima County plot or cremated, Hess says. That can add up to thousands of dollars in costs per year to the county.
It’s tragedies like those that another component of S. 744 hopes to cut down. In addition to its focus on enforcement, the bill calls for construction of 1,000 distress beacons along nearly 2,000 mile-long U.S. – Mexico border.
Currently, there are 22 distress beacons in the Tucson sector and 24 distress beacons in the Yuma sector. Factors on where the distress beacons are placed include how remote an area is, how many agents are deployed in the area, number of immigrant deaths in the area and what technology is available to help patrol, says Nicole Ballistrea, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson sector.
Distress beacons were first installed in Arizona in 2002 and consist of tall red posts equipped with buttons that can be pushed in emergencies to call for help. The towers are solar powered and lighted at night. Instructions for pressing the button and sending a distress signal appear in multiple languages. The instructions do not say the beacon is connected to Border Patrol. After being treated medically, border crossers without appropriate documentation are deported.
The Tucson sector beacons have been activated about 180 times “over the last few years,” Ballistrea says. Other than that estimate, there is little information on how effective distress beacons are.
Johnston, of No More Deaths, approves of the distress-beacon component of S 744, but says he believes it could be improved if the beacons were equipped with cell-phone towers, so migrants in distress could use their cell phones in areas with poor reception.
“That’s the thing that will save the most lives,” he says. “Right now, migrants have to climb to the top of the highest mountain to get reception, and that’s very difficult. If the beacons have a cell-phone tower and use that ability, I’ll be in favor. Otherwise, it’s just a PR thing.”
The U.S. Border Patrol and local Arizona humanitarian groups have a checkered history. In the past, Border Patrol agents have ticketed humanitarian volunteers for littering after volunteers left water bottles and food out for migrants. Videos also exist of Border Patrol agents destroying the water and other provisions left out by the humanitarian groups.
Right now, relationships between the aid groups and the Border Patrol seem better, Johnston says. He attributes the improvement to Manuel Padilla Jr., who became the Tucson sector Border Patrol chief earlier this year.
“At the moment, the sector chief is sympathetic to our cause,” Johnston says. “Still, water is being destroyed. Blankets are still being taken away.”
Rubio-Goldsmith, who has studied the interaction between U.S. Border Patrol agents and border communities, says the Border Patrol has the difficult task of balancing justice and mercy.
“Border Patrol doesn’t like people going through their land, yet Border Patrol is there and they are supposed to help,” she says. “How they respond is kind of a mixed bag.”
Ballistrea says the Tucson sector Border Patrol maintains an “ongoing dialogue with multiple humanitarian groups.”
In instances where migrants coming into the country illegally become distressed, Border Patrol agents must “first and foremost act as humanitarians,” she says.
“Employees who disregard (their oath) and instead choose to violate the trust of the citizens they swore to protect will be held accountable,” she says. “Although (Border Patrol and humanitarian groups) may originate from different backgrounds, we share a common goal in saving lives. Agents are often called upon to shift from law enforcement to rescue mode in a moment’s notice.”
The best way to reform immigration policy is to work on economic policies affecting migrant workers and focus on the root motivator for why so many Mexican immigrants come to the U.S., Lefebvre says.
“There has always been a flow between the U.S. and Mexico,” he says. “People accepted that as a fact of life. Until 1994, (policies) were loose most of the time. When there was a tough economy, there were restrictions. When we needed workers, we encouraged them to come.”
In the past, workers would come from Mexico to work in the agriculture, construction or hotel industries. They would work for six months to a year, send money home and then go home themselves, Lefebvre says. Some came back and some didn’t.
“They preferred to live in Mexico, but came to the U.S. to save money for their families and for farmland,” he says.
S 744 would reform worker visas, and that change in system could stem the flow of illegal immigration, says Meissner, of the Migration Policy Institute. The bill, if passed, could also lead to more migrant rescues by increasing air surveillance, she says. It could lead to more humanitarian efforts from BorStar. If enforcement continues to increase in Arizona, the bill could shift primary migration patterns to Texas. And yes, she says, it could lead to more migrant deaths in the Arizona desert.
“It’s probably some of all of the above,” she says. “But, Border Patrol is quite successful at this point. Adding more policy on border enforcement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because border enforcement alone is not a viable enough strategy.”
http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2013/12/deaths-will-continue-with-or-without-immigration-reform/
Friday, January 3, 2014
A Vale of Terror, Transcended: Artists Explore Immigration, Border Issues and the Drug War
The New York Times
January 2, 2014
by Laura Tillman
MATAMOROS, Mexico — The artist Patricia Ruiz-Bayón recently met with three migrants in a shelter in this ravaged border city and invited them to take part in one of her performance works. The piece, “70+2...,” commemorated an act of extreme brutality that continues to traumatize the region: a 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in nearby San Fernando that the Mexican authorities say was carried out by the Zetas criminal gang.
Like the slain migrants, who were pulled from buses and shot, Ms. Ruiz-Bayón’s art volunteers were on a treacherous journey north toward the United States. On the day of the performance, barefoot and dressed in white, the participants, two men and a woman, walked slowly through soil that Ms. Ruiz-Bayón had transported from a San Fernando cornfield, evoking a mass grave but also hope and renewal. Then they walked along an infinity symbol that had been carved into the dirt, signifying the eternal path of migration.
January 2, 2014
by Laura Tillman
MATAMOROS, Mexico — The artist Patricia Ruiz-Bayón recently met with three migrants in a shelter in this ravaged border city and invited them to take part in one of her performance works. The piece, “70+2...,” commemorated an act of extreme brutality that continues to traumatize the region: a 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in nearby San Fernando that the Mexican authorities say was carried out by the Zetas criminal gang.
Like the slain migrants, who were pulled from buses and shot, Ms. Ruiz-Bayón’s art volunteers were on a treacherous journey north toward the United States. On the day of the performance, barefoot and dressed in white, the participants, two men and a woman, walked slowly through soil that Ms. Ruiz-Bayón had transported from a San Fernando cornfield, evoking a mass grave but also hope and renewal. Then they walked along an infinity symbol that had been carved into the dirt, signifying the eternal path of migration.
The performance was the first in a series called “Todos Somos Victimas y Culpables, We Are All Victims and Culpable,” a deeply serious message in a part of Mexico that continues to be rattled by clashes between rival gangs and the police.
Ms. Ruiz-Bayón’s work is part of a growing art movement in the Rio Grande Valley exploring immigration politics and a rise in drug violence in the region over the past four years. Although the artists’ circumstances and their audiences vary, depending on where they live, they see themselves as part of a transnational community that is artificially divided.
The 18-foot-high border fence, ever-present in the artists’ work, is a ready symbol for the dissonance between the local understanding of the region as a unified one with strong cultural and economic ties, and policy prescriptions from Washington aimed at controlling the area and dividing it into discrete parts. As a new immigration bill presents the likelihood of new fencing and increased surveillance, the artists are determined to highlight the discord and societal hierarchy that the fence represents to many here. In their work, they also conjure an alternative situation.
For Mexican artists in Matamoros and Reynosa, where the local news media has been largely silenced, their artwork, often urgent and somber, fills a void.
Artists on the American side of the border tend to take a more ironic approach. David Freeman of McAllen, Tex., designs piñatas in the shape of border guards, presumably waiting to be thrashed to bits, and meticulously made “trophies” for gang leaders composed of tiny machine guns, marijuana leaves and other objects covered in gold spray paint. He also integrates found objects into his work, like the wood-plank ladders the migrants used to climb the multibillion-dollar security fence and clothing and ID cards that they leave by the river.
Mr. Freeman moved to the region nine years ago, just as McAllen was beginning to pump civic funds into the arts. Since then, new galleries have sprung up on Main Street along with a monthly “art walk” and low-cost studio space. Not long ago, his studio was packed with work for a solo show at Texas A&M University at Commerce. Photographs of the border fence shared space with paintings in which he had daintily etched the fence into foreign landscapes. Mr. Freeman said he hopes his work will gain exposure beyond Texas and have a greater impact. Most galleries and museums in the Rio Grande Valley favor more conventional abstract and landscape paintings over political work.
The classically trained painter Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez relies on an altogether different strategy to pierce what he says is the indifference of some Americans to the region’s drug war, painting Baroque-style scenes of violence in a dark palette. Some of his paintings show decapitated heads; other, larger tableaus depict gang members torturing victims or families discovering the bodies of their dead loved ones after shootouts.
Mr. Gonzalez, who was born in Reynosa, Mexico, and now lives across the river in Harlingen, Tex., left the Rio Grande Valley to study at the New York Academy of Art in 2002. When he returned, he quickly recognized the parallels between the gang narratives and historical paintings about biblical violence, like Caravaggio’s “Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.” He calls attention to the demand for drugs and cheap labor in the United States, which contributes to the drug war, by recreating real events in a style of painting that viewers are more accustomed to seeing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art than on CNN.
“If you depict it in a way that’s too raw, people are going to be turned off by it,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “You have to do it in a way that they’re drawn in, and then slowly they realize what it is that they’re looking at.”
His paintings have been collected and exhibited by museums in Texas and New Mexico, although some museums in the Rio Grande Valley are reluctant to show more graphic violence, he said. “It really doesn’t compare to what’s actually happening,” Mr. Gonzalez said of his stylized work.
While artists like Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Freeman have the freedom to speak out about politics in their work, the risks are higher for artists across the border.
After Reynosa was taken over by violence, the artist Tochiro Gallegos abandoned street photography, mindful that taking a picture of someone who didn’t want to be photographed could cost him his life. He moved into the studio and now makes portraits that speak metaphorically about the violence. Some of his subjects are shown with belts of bullets across their mouths — “a way to express everything we see, the way that we have to be quiet,” Mr. Gallegos said.
Ms. Ruiz-Bayón’s work, which extends beyond performance to sculpture and mixed media, also relies on metaphor to talk about migration, gender and violence.
In 2010, the same year as the massacre in San Fernando, a wave of gang violence pushed into Matamoros. Traumatized, Ms. Ruiz-Bayón said, she could not bring herself to make any artwork for an entire year.
In “70+2...,” she sought catharsis. “I’m so sick of guns, I’m so sick of blood,“ she said. “I wanted to make something that would make people think deeper and ask: ‘O.K., this is happening to me. How can I feel a little relief?’ ”
She visited San Fernando and tracked down on the Internet videos of the family members of the murdered migrants and a survivor. She spent time with migrants from Honduras and Guatemala, who also participated in her piece, and learned about the poverty they fled, the families they left behind and their journeys north.
“I had urgency to heal myself,” Ms. Ruiz-Bayón said. “And hopefully, in the process, it was a healing piece for the people.”
The prospect of performing in Matamoros last August initially made her anxious. Few murders are solved there, and she was concerned about the safety of the volunteers in the work. But the pieces finally fell into place, and she scheduled the performance at a secure private building, her concerns allayed. “I thought, if the migrants are brave enough to take this long, long, dangerous journey, why shouldn’t I?” she said.
The victims of the 2010 massacre have also been memorialized by journalists and novelists who created a website, 72migrantes.com, with profiles and photographs evoking each of the dead.
George Flaherty, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in Latin American art, said terror is a major theme for artists who set out to document scores of anonymous deaths. “It’s about creating alternative archives and alternate ways of recognizing that which has been forgotten or willfully ignored,” he said.
The art is also about rectifying the way the border region is perceived from afar. The photographer Stefan Falke has been documenting artists in the region since 2008 in an project titled “La Frontera: Artists Along the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Having grown up in a divided Germany, Mr. Falke said, he was suspicious about the mainstream portrayal of the border area as a dangerous place without much to offer. He said he wanted to convey that the border is not a space of absence, but one of creativity and life.
To that end, he has photographed 180 artists from Brownsville to Tijuana. An exhibition of works from “La Frontera” is to open at the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen on Jan. 23.
“You hear about tens of thousands of killings, and it’s natural to think, ‘Why would people want to live there?’ ” he said. “Then you go there, and you find everyone you meet doesn’t want to leave. They just love their city.”
Ms. Ruiz-Bayón, who has lived and worked in both the United States and Mexico, declined to identify her birthplace, saying she does not believe she belongs to one country or the other. “For me, the border is like a parentheses that is neither Mexico nor the United States,” she said. “It’s a place of its own.”
While such sentiments are common along the border, they are a striking counterpoint to discussions of immigration reform in Congress that take the necessity of enforced border security and hundreds of miles of hard fencing for granted.
Some artists have used the fence itself as an exhibition site. After construction crews built a new section less than a block from Galeria 409 in Brownsville, its owner, the artist Mark Clark, asked artists to bring their work to the fence and hang it on its metal beams. Included in the show, “Art Against the Wall,” was Mr. Clark’s painting of a voluptuous woman in a bikini floating down the Rio Grande in an inner tube, extending “Saludos desde el otro lado,” or “Greetings from the other side.”
Mr. Flaherty said that artists who seek to upend the way the border is usually viewed are trying to inspire a broader international conversation.
“They’re very much challenging the understanding of the border as a checkpoint and geopolitical boundary or zone,” he said, “and bringing to our attention that the border is malleable, it’s figurative, it’s poetic.”
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Cornyn's border wall shift
Rio Grande Guardian
December 28, 2013
by Steve Taylor
MISSION, December 28 - One of the more remarkable stories of 2013 along the border was U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s shift in stance towards the border wall.
Cornyn voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. The legislation called for 700 miles of physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Cornyn defended that vote vociferously for many years afterwards. However, over the past year the senior senator from Texas changed his tone on the issue and many put this down to input from groups like the Border Trade Alliance and the Texas Border Coalition. In June, the U.S. Senate passed the Hoeven-Corker border security amendment, which called for an additional 350 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border. Cornyn opposed the measure and made clear his opposition at a “Smart Border” roundtable he and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar held Sept. 5 at a warehouse in Mission belonging to CiL Group, a major exporter/importer of Texas and Mexican agricultural goods. Dozens of business and economic development leaders from the Rio Grande Valley were present for the roundtable. They applauded Cornyn’s stance on the border wall and on legislation he and Cuellar authored to allow public-private partnerships to fund infrastructure projects at border ports of entry. After the roundtable discussion, Cornyn and Cuellar held a news conference. At the conference, Cornyn went further than ever before in distancing himself from those who believe a border wall will deter illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Asked about his stance on the border wall, Cornyn told a reporter: “The problem is that there are some people who do not understand the border. When they think about border security they think, let's build a fence. Well, we know the Border Patrol has told us that that is useful in some urban areas but it is not something you are going to do across the entire border. It really is laughable because, as we have said at different times, if you build a 50-foot fence along the border there would be a boom in the sale of 51-foot ladders. Or there would be tunnels or something else. It makes no sense. “What we need is a smart border approach. We need technology, we need boots on the ground, we do need some infrastructure but the part that we are here today to emphasis is that if you can isolate the bad actors by facilitating the flow of legitimate commerce and people who want to come here and spend money then that actually helps the law enforcement agencies focus their efforts on the people that they need to focus on; not everybody because as you know it is just a very small, very tiny percentage of the people who come across the border who want to do us harm or commit crime.” Some of the elected officials at the roundtable could not believe the man making those remarks was Sen. John Cornyn. He had, after all, been such a big supporter of the border wall in previous years. At the news conference, Rep. Cuellar was full of praise for Cornyn. But, the Laredo Democrat appeared to take a swipe at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. “Senator Cornyn gets it. He understands the border. I appreciate the good work the Senator has done for our state and especially the dynamic border we call home, the Rio Grande,” Cuellar said. “We have got to have sensible, smart, border security. When we think about border security, when we think about the border, this is what we ought to be looking at,” said Cuellar, pointing to bundles of Texas cotton in the Mission warehouse that CiL Group exports to Mexico. “This is the trade that we ought to focus on,” Cuellar continued. “We have got to support people like Senator Cornyn that understand the border because there are other people that just come in, they have a press conference, they say they are going to take care of the border and they just do not get it. They ought to come up here, spend time like the Senator did here today with business people and say this is what the border is all about.” Cuellar pointed out that when one considers FBI statistics, the border crime rate is lower than the national crime rate. He said where he and Cornyn work, in Washington, D.C., it is much more violent than the border region, with far more murders and rapes reported. “When people come here to the border, they come in and say they are going to do this and this. This is what they need to look at,” Cuellar said, referring again to the bundles of cotton that acted as a backdrop for the news conference. "Yes, we need to do border security but let us think about the trade, the business, the retail that is so important to our area,” Cuellar said. Cornyn said the legislation he and Cuellar filed to boost infrastructure development at border ports of entry shows that Congress can, sometimes, work in a bipartisan fashion. “We need what I like to call a smart border, that is one that strikes the right balance between security and one that respects the important role of binational trade and commerce and tourism and what that means to our economy,” Cornyn said. “Six million jobs in the United States depend upon that binational trade. And, as Mexico continues to grow its economy, which it is, and we continue to see infrastructure improvements like transportation put more pressure on our Texas borders and our ports of entry it is important we have not only the infrastructure but also the staffing. And while we know the federal government has neglected those for a long time we are introducing legislation that will provide an opportunity for more investment in terms of staffing and infrastructure here in the form of public-private partnerships in particular.” Marc A. Rodriguez, chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, was present for the “Smart Border” roundtable. At the news conference, Rodriguez said he was “totally impressed” with the regional approach taken by border leaders and the spirit of cooperation that existed between Cornyn and Cuellar. “As goes Texas, so goes the nation,” he said. Postscript: On Dec. 19 in Washington, D.C., Customs and Border Protection signed five public-private partnerships that will allow local entities to pay for additional CBP staff at ports of entry. The agreements are permitted under the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013. The idea is to allow CBP to set up a reimbursable fee agreement program to increase the department's ability to provide new or enhanced services on a reimbursable basis to support growth in cross-border trade and travel. The five entities selected for these partnerships are Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport; The City of El Paso, Texas; South Texas Assets Consortium (STAC); The City of Houston Airport System; and Miami-Dade County. STAC consists of the cities of Laredo, McAllen and Pharr, Starr-Camargo Bridge Co., and Cameron County. “The utilization of public-private partnerships is an important component of CBP’s strategy to optimize resources,” said CBP Acting Commissioner Thomas S. Winkowski. “Together with our private sector partners, we can better facilitate trade and travel to continue to grow our local and national economies.” Winkowski said the reimbursable services proposals were reviewed and ranked based on criteria including: impact on current CBP operations, health and safety issues, community and economic benefits, and the feasibility of instituting the agreements in a timely manner. He said these agreements will not replace existing services, and new services can include all customs and immigration inspection-related matters. “We congratulate the STAC partners for signing their annex agreement today, which will reflect the unique needs of port communities from Laredo to Brownsville,” Border Trade Alliance President Noe Garcia said. “We look forward to these pilots demonstrating that CBP and partners at the local level can craft innovative solutions for facilitating legitimate trade and travel through improved staffing levels.” Sam F. Vale, president of Starr-Camargo Bridge Co., said his bridge is ready to begin implementing the agreements. “These agreements take an innovative, regional approach to port management. Now bridge owners and operators have a greater voice in how needed resources will be deployed to the ports of entry. On behalf of all the STAC participants, we look forward to working with CBP in implementing these pilot projects, which we believe will greatly enhance our region’s economy and international trade competitiveness," said Vale, who is also president of STAC.
http://riograndeguardian.com/bordernews_story.asp?story_no=20
December 28, 2013
by Steve Taylor
MISSION, December 28 - One of the more remarkable stories of 2013 along the border was U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s shift in stance towards the border wall.
Cornyn voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. The legislation called for 700 miles of physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Cornyn defended that vote vociferously for many years afterwards. However, over the past year the senior senator from Texas changed his tone on the issue and many put this down to input from groups like the Border Trade Alliance and the Texas Border Coalition. In June, the U.S. Senate passed the Hoeven-Corker border security amendment, which called for an additional 350 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border. Cornyn opposed the measure and made clear his opposition at a “Smart Border” roundtable he and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar held Sept. 5 at a warehouse in Mission belonging to CiL Group, a major exporter/importer of Texas and Mexican agricultural goods. Dozens of business and economic development leaders from the Rio Grande Valley were present for the roundtable. They applauded Cornyn’s stance on the border wall and on legislation he and Cuellar authored to allow public-private partnerships to fund infrastructure projects at border ports of entry. After the roundtable discussion, Cornyn and Cuellar held a news conference. At the conference, Cornyn went further than ever before in distancing himself from those who believe a border wall will deter illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Asked about his stance on the border wall, Cornyn told a reporter: “The problem is that there are some people who do not understand the border. When they think about border security they think, let's build a fence. Well, we know the Border Patrol has told us that that is useful in some urban areas but it is not something you are going to do across the entire border. It really is laughable because, as we have said at different times, if you build a 50-foot fence along the border there would be a boom in the sale of 51-foot ladders. Or there would be tunnels or something else. It makes no sense. “What we need is a smart border approach. We need technology, we need boots on the ground, we do need some infrastructure but the part that we are here today to emphasis is that if you can isolate the bad actors by facilitating the flow of legitimate commerce and people who want to come here and spend money then that actually helps the law enforcement agencies focus their efforts on the people that they need to focus on; not everybody because as you know it is just a very small, very tiny percentage of the people who come across the border who want to do us harm or commit crime.” Some of the elected officials at the roundtable could not believe the man making those remarks was Sen. John Cornyn. He had, after all, been such a big supporter of the border wall in previous years. At the news conference, Rep. Cuellar was full of praise for Cornyn. But, the Laredo Democrat appeared to take a swipe at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. “Senator Cornyn gets it. He understands the border. I appreciate the good work the Senator has done for our state and especially the dynamic border we call home, the Rio Grande,” Cuellar said. “We have got to have sensible, smart, border security. When we think about border security, when we think about the border, this is what we ought to be looking at,” said Cuellar, pointing to bundles of Texas cotton in the Mission warehouse that CiL Group exports to Mexico. “This is the trade that we ought to focus on,” Cuellar continued. “We have got to support people like Senator Cornyn that understand the border because there are other people that just come in, they have a press conference, they say they are going to take care of the border and they just do not get it. They ought to come up here, spend time like the Senator did here today with business people and say this is what the border is all about.” Cuellar pointed out that when one considers FBI statistics, the border crime rate is lower than the national crime rate. He said where he and Cornyn work, in Washington, D.C., it is much more violent than the border region, with far more murders and rapes reported. “When people come here to the border, they come in and say they are going to do this and this. This is what they need to look at,” Cuellar said, referring again to the bundles of cotton that acted as a backdrop for the news conference. "Yes, we need to do border security but let us think about the trade, the business, the retail that is so important to our area,” Cuellar said. Cornyn said the legislation he and Cuellar filed to boost infrastructure development at border ports of entry shows that Congress can, sometimes, work in a bipartisan fashion. “We need what I like to call a smart border, that is one that strikes the right balance between security and one that respects the important role of binational trade and commerce and tourism and what that means to our economy,” Cornyn said. “Six million jobs in the United States depend upon that binational trade. And, as Mexico continues to grow its economy, which it is, and we continue to see infrastructure improvements like transportation put more pressure on our Texas borders and our ports of entry it is important we have not only the infrastructure but also the staffing. And while we know the federal government has neglected those for a long time we are introducing legislation that will provide an opportunity for more investment in terms of staffing and infrastructure here in the form of public-private partnerships in particular.” Marc A. Rodriguez, chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, was present for the “Smart Border” roundtable. At the news conference, Rodriguez said he was “totally impressed” with the regional approach taken by border leaders and the spirit of cooperation that existed between Cornyn and Cuellar. “As goes Texas, so goes the nation,” he said. Postscript: On Dec. 19 in Washington, D.C., Customs and Border Protection signed five public-private partnerships that will allow local entities to pay for additional CBP staff at ports of entry. The agreements are permitted under the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013. The idea is to allow CBP to set up a reimbursable fee agreement program to increase the department's ability to provide new or enhanced services on a reimbursable basis to support growth in cross-border trade and travel. The five entities selected for these partnerships are Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport; The City of El Paso, Texas; South Texas Assets Consortium (STAC); The City of Houston Airport System; and Miami-Dade County. STAC consists of the cities of Laredo, McAllen and Pharr, Starr-Camargo Bridge Co., and Cameron County. “The utilization of public-private partnerships is an important component of CBP’s strategy to optimize resources,” said CBP Acting Commissioner Thomas S. Winkowski. “Together with our private sector partners, we can better facilitate trade and travel to continue to grow our local and national economies.” Winkowski said the reimbursable services proposals were reviewed and ranked based on criteria including: impact on current CBP operations, health and safety issues, community and economic benefits, and the feasibility of instituting the agreements in a timely manner. He said these agreements will not replace existing services, and new services can include all customs and immigration inspection-related matters. “We congratulate the STAC partners for signing their annex agreement today, which will reflect the unique needs of port communities from Laredo to Brownsville,” Border Trade Alliance President Noe Garcia said. “We look forward to these pilots demonstrating that CBP and partners at the local level can craft innovative solutions for facilitating legitimate trade and travel through improved staffing levels.” Sam F. Vale, president of Starr-Camargo Bridge Co., said his bridge is ready to begin implementing the agreements. “These agreements take an innovative, regional approach to port management. Now bridge owners and operators have a greater voice in how needed resources will be deployed to the ports of entry. On behalf of all the STAC participants, we look forward to working with CBP in implementing these pilot projects, which we believe will greatly enhance our region’s economy and international trade competitiveness," said Vale, who is also president of STAC.
http://riograndeguardian.com/bordernews_story.asp?story_no=20
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Deadly border agent incidents cloaked in silence
Arizona Republic
December 15, 2013
by Bob Ortega and Rob O' Dell
A
ghost is haunting Nogales.
His face stares out from shop windows. It is plastered on handbills and painted on walls under the shadow of the U.S.-Mexican border fence here. Candles and doves are stenciled onto steel posts of the fence itself in his memory, each a promise not to forget the night, 14 months ago, when teenager Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot 10 times in the back and head by one or more Border Patrol agents firing through the fence into Mexico.
Similar specters haunt other border towns in Arizona, Texas and California, with the families of the dead charging that Border Patrol agents time and again have killed Mexicans and U.S. citizens with impunity.
An Arizona Republic investigation has found Border Patrol agents who use deadly force face few, if any, public repercussions, even in cases in which the justification for the shooting seems dubious.
Since 2005, on-duty Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers have killed at least 42 people, including at least 13 Americans.
These deaths, all but four of which occurred along or near the southwest border, vary from strongly justifiable to highly questionable. CBP officials say agents who use excessive force are disciplined. But they won’t say who, when, or what discipline, with the exception of a short administrative leave. In none of the 42 deaths is any agent or officer publicly known to have faced consequences — not from the Border Patrol, not from Customs and Border Protection or Homeland Security, not from the Department of Justice, and not, ultimately, from criminal or civil courts.
Internal discipline is a black hole. There have been no publicly disclosed repercussions — even when, as has happened at least three times, agents shot unarmed teenagers in the back.
That appearance of a lack of accountability has been fed by a culture of secrecy about agents’ use of deadly force.
CBP leaders refuse to release their policies, calling them law-enforcement sensitive. They won’t disclose the names of agents who use deadly force. They won’t say, in any instance, whether deadly force was justified. The lack of transparency goes against the “best practices” that national police organizations recommend for dealing with deadly-force incidents.
The Republic found the vast majority of Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers respond to conflict with restraint. Even when facing potentially deadly force, most agents and officers don’t turn to their firearms. But agents who killed mostly did so under circumstances virtually identical to hundreds of encounters that other agents resolved without lethal force and without serious injuries to either side.
In the last four years, rock-throwing incidents accounted for eight of the 24 instances in which agents killed people. The Border Patrol considers rocks deadly weapons that justify lethal force, even though it is rare for agents to be injured in “rockings,” as they call them, and even though, as agents’ reports showed, several less-lethal long-distance weapons are highly effective against rock-throwers, The Republic found.
The vast majority of rockings take place in a few, well-known, mostly urban spots along the border. But the Border Patrol doesn’t require agents working in those areas to carry or use less-lethal alternatives.
And when agents use deadly force, investigations by CBP and the FBI can take years to be released, yet can be perfunctory, and are typically opaque.
The Republic reviewed nearly 1,600 use-of-force cases by the Border Patrol and CBP between 2010 and May 2012 — some 12,000 pages of documents that it took the agency nearly a year to release.
The Republic also examined many other documents relating to use-of-force deaths and use of firearms by agents since 2005. (CBP includes both Border Patrol agents, who work between ports of entry, and Customs and Border Protection officers, who work at ports of entry.)
The investigation offers the most comprehensive look to date into the use of force by CBP and the Border Patrol, which, with roughly 43,000 agents and officers, comprise the country’s largest law-enforcement body.
Border Patrol agents do face dangers. Of the 22 who died in the line of duty in the last nine years, most died in vehicle or training accidents. Four died in direct conflicts with aggressors – including one case in which Border Patrol agents fired on one another.
Of the 42 use-of-force fatalities, some — such as the five cases in which agents shot and killed people who fired at them first — provoked little dispute.
But in nine of the 24 use-of-force deaths since 2010, agents’ accounts were contradicted by other witnesses or by other law-enforcement officers. In three cases, widely distributed videos conflicted with agents’ reports of what happened.
In reviewing these incidents, The Republic filed more than 120 Freedom of Information Act and public-records requests (and many appeals) with six federal departments or agencies and seven states.
Often, records were heavily redacted and incomplete. For example, The Republic documented, through other sources, four deaths at the hands of agents that were not included in CBP’s nearly 1,600 use-of-force incident reports. In many reports, the information is so incomplete that it’s impossible to determine what happened.
Because of that lack of transparency, it can be difficult to determine the truth when agents’ accounts differ from witnesses.
Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, in a recent report requested by members of Congress, found that many agents don’t understand their use-of-force policy. Before the report was publicly released, DHS and CBP officials blacked out recommendations that agents being assaulted with rocks should respond with less-lethal alternatives.
Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher insisted agents will continue to use deadly force against rock throwers, because rocks are potentially deadly weapons.
CBP, Homeland Security and Border Patrol officials declined repeated interview requests, agreeing only to a limited, off-the-record discussion from which the agency would approve a few limited statements. CBP officials declined to discuss the agency’s lack of transparency on the record.
But Acting Deputy CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said CBP doesn’t control the release of information or pace of investigations, pointing to the FBI and Homeland Security.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., one of the architects of a immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate that would increase the size of the Border Patrol, said border agents have “a tough job.”
The senator added: “Any loss of life incurred in the course of Border Patrol duties, as with any other government agency, should be given a close look."
O
n the night he died, Oct. 10, 2012, Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez told his grandmother, Taide Elena, that he was going to walk to the nearby Oxxo convenience store where his brother Diego worked, off Calle Internacional. That street runs below the border fence between Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Ariz.
“It’s our neighborhood,” said Elena, sitting on the couch of her cinder-block home, her hands balled together, two days after her grandson was shot. “He was a good boy; he’d come and go. I didn’t think much about it.”
Elena had been minding the boys for several months. Their father died three years earlier; their mother, Araceli Rodriguez, was trying to get the bank where she worked to transfer her to Nogales.
Jose Antonio, 16, had taken the separation hard, she said. He’d had to suspend school when they ran short of money for his tuition, but he was excited about starting classes again the next week.
That night, as the boy neared Calle Internacional, police and Border Patrol agents across the border responded to a 911 call about men hoisting bundles of marijuana over the fence.
Nogales Police K-9 officer John Zuniga spotted two men trying to climb back into Mexico. Agents yelled at the men to come down, Zuniga wrote in his report. He “heard several rocks start hitting the ground, and I looked up and could see the rocks flying through the air.”
As he took his dog back to his car, Zuniga heard gunfire. He looked up and saw an agent at the fence. Based on ballistics reports from Sonora state police, at least one agent fired 14 hollow-point bullets from a standard-issue .40-caliber Heckler & Koch pistol through the fence, killing Elena Rodriguez.
The Border Patrol hasn’t released the incident report. It hasn’t identified the agent or agents involved. In an initial statement, officials said agents were assaulted with rocks.
“After verbal commands from agents to cease were ignored, one agent then discharged his service firearm. One of the subjects appeared to have been hit,” the statement said. Subsequently, the agency has declined to confirm whether more than one agent opened fire.
But neither Zuniga nor another Nogales police officer there reported hearing any shouted orders. Three witnesses on the Mexican side said they heard no shouts before the gunfire. Isidro Alvarado, a security guard, said Elena Rodriguez was walking about 20 feet ahead of him when two youths ran past them away from the fence. Then he heard gunshots and saw Elena Rodriguez fall.
CBP won’t make public its use-of-force policy. Agency officials have said agents are authorized to fire when they face potentially deadly force, including rocks. However, if they can do so safely, agents must issue a verbal warning before firing, a Homeland Security memo states.
Where Elena Rodriguez died, the Mexican side of the fence is about 25 feet lower than the U.S. side. Due to the arc that rocks thrown over the fence there would have to follow, it would be all but impossible for a rock thrown from Mexico to hit someone near the fence on the U.S. side. And the agent (or agents) would have had to be standing at the fence to fire through the 3 and 1/2-inch gaps between the bars.
Araceli Rodriguez, who now lives in Nogales, said that, when the FBI interviewed her, she believed that “they’re looking for some way to blame my son, some way to make it his fault.” She asked why CBP hasn’t released or let her attorney see video from a border-fence camera less than 50 yards from where her son was killed.
“Do you think … that if they had a video of my son throwing rocks, they wouldn’t have produced it by now? They wouldn’t have spread it for all the world to see? Of course they would have,” she said.
CBP officials declined to discuss the case, citing an ongoing FBI investigation.
W
hether Elena Rodriguez was simply walking by or was throwing rocks, the circumstances under which he was shot were similar to those in scores of other alleged “rocking” incidents that agents resolved without firearms.
Incident reports suggest that lookouts in Mexico often throw rocks at agents to try to help drug mules or undocumented migrants get away. In 2012, rockings accounted for nearly half of the 555 assaults on agents reported by CBP.
On the whole, agents rarely turn to deadly force. In the nearly 1,600 use-of-force incident reports reviewed by The Republic, agents resorted to gunfire about 4 percent of the time, and killed people less than 1 percent of the time from 2010 through May 2012.
Eight times since 2010, Border Patrol agents killed people whom they said were throwing rocks at them, including six across the border. But in at least 160 other reported cases, agents resolved cross-border rock-throwing with less-lethal weapons that can fire, for example, balls filled with pepper spray. In those cases, no one died and almost no one was seriously hurt — including the agents.
No agent has died from being hit with a rock; agents reported injuries in two of those 160 cross-border rockings.
CBP agents and officers can carry two categories of weapons: Lethal weapons include the H&K pistols issued to all agents and optional firearms such as shotguns and M-4 rifles. “Less lethal” weapons include close and long-range options.
For close range, agents must carry either cans of pepper spray or collapsible steel batons (which look like narrow baseball bats); most carry both.
Of the long-range less-lethal weapons, agents most commonly use two: The pepper-spray balls launching system, essentially a modified paintball gun, can fire more than 10 balls a second filled with pepper spray, letting agents saturate an area with irritating vapors. The longer-range FN-303, a rifle-style weapon, uses compressed air to shoot “kinetic impact” projectiles, which are meant to incapacitate people without killing them.
Agents who used those less-lethal weapons reported they were usually highly effective at stopping rock throwers.
On Sept. 10, 2010, an agent being assaulted with rocks from the same street where Elena Rodriguez would be killed wrote that he used his pepper-spray ball launcher to saturate the area, firing “volleys of four to six rounds each near where the assailants were throwing the rocks. The rock throwers retreated from the area without further incident.”
On April 5, 2011, another agent in the same area was trying to catch someone, “when I felt a rock strike me on my right shoulder blade. I immediately turned and started saturating the area with my pepper ball launching system as several more rocks were thrown at me … the situation was put under control. There were no injuries.”
The Border Patrol doesn’t require agents to be trained in, to carry or to use any of the long-range less-lethal devices. They are strictly optional. McAleenan said CBP is looking at giving agents more “less-lethal options in high risk areas,” among other possible changes.
C
arlos LaMadrid, a 19-year-old American, was smuggling marijuana when he was killed on March 21, 2011.
LaMadrid fled toward the Mexican border as Douglas police tried to pull over his Chevy Avalanche pickup truck. Douglas Police Officer Mark Gonzales, behind him, reported that LaMadrid jammed the truck to a stop as a Border Patrol Chevy Tahoe pulled up, colliding alongside. LaMadrid and a passenger leaped out and ran to a ladder. Someone already on top of the fence began hurling rocks at the Border Patrol vehicle.
As LaMadrid climbed the ladder, Border Patrol Agent Lucas Tidwell fired his handgun through the Tahoe’s windshield, then opened the door and fired four more shots, hitting LaMadrid four times in the back and thigh. LaMadrid died that afternoon at a Sierra Vista hospital.
Two and a half years later, LaMadrid’s mother, Guadalupe Guerrero, says that her son’s actions didn’t justify killing him.
“If they’d arrested him, charged him, taken him to court, that wouldn’t have mattered,” Guerrero said. “But the Border Patrol took matters into their own hands.... The badge isn’t a license to kill.”
Immediately after the shooting, the Border Patrol whisked Tidwell back to the Douglas station. They declined to allow him to be interviewed by the Douglas police or the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office, noted a sheriff’s report. Under the Border Patrol’s union contract, agents must be allowed to meet with union representatives and attorneys before deciding whether to speak with investigators.
That afternoon, FBI Agents Jeremy Nielsen and Kyle Fisher met with the Border Patrol, the county sheriff and Douglas police, the sheriff’s report noted. The agents said the bureau would look into whether any crimes were committed against Tidwell. The bureau left it to the sheriff’s office to investigate whether the shooting of LaMadrid was justified. Douglas Price, the agent in charge of the FBI Phoenix Division, said that in joint investigations the local sheriff’s office typically handles homicides.
But the Cochise detectives had to do so without any access to Tidwell. Based on their findings – which included a video from a border camera that showed someone on the fence making a throwing motion – Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer decided not to prosecute. The DOJ held the case open for more than two years before announcing last August that it wouldn’t pursue charges against Tidwell. The FBI said cases are often open two years or more; Justice officials wouldn’t comment on why this case was open so long.
Tidwell “followed appropriate protocols; he defended himself; he wasn’t disciplined or anything for it,” by the Border Patrol, said Tidwell’s attorney, Sean Chapman. In a press release, the Justice Department said “LaMadrid was in the line of fire,” and that “there is insufficient evidence ... to disprove that the agent was acting in self-defense when he fired at the rock thrower and mistakenly struck the victim.”
Border Patrol agents or CBP officers are rarely charged with using excessive use of force or violating someone’s civil rights by killing them. In part, that’s because agents, like other law-enforcement officers, tend to be given the benefit of the doubt by federal investigators.
The Department of Justice has not been able to show any cases in which it recommended civil or criminal charges against a CBP agent or officer who killed in the line of duty in at least the past six years. An extensive review by The Republic also found no instances.
The public, too, tends to give agents the benefit of the doubt.
In 2005, two Border Patrol agents in Texas, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, shot, but didn’t kill, an unarmed drug smuggler who was fleeing. They tried to cover up the incident by falsifying reports, destroying evidence and lying to investigators.
They were convicted in 2006 on various charges and sentenced to more than a decade each in federal prison, but a swell of public pressure led President George W. Bush to commute their sentences on his last day in office.
In 2007, Rheinheimer, the Cochise County attorney, charged Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett with second-degree murder after Corbett shot to death Francisco Dominguez Rivera, 22, an undocumented migrant. Corbett maintained that Dominguez Rivera had thrown rocks at him; after two trials ended in hung juries, Rheinheimer opted not to to try Corbett a third time.
In some cases, the investigations have been perfunctory.
On Jan. 4, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Miguel Torres Vasquez shot to death Jorge Alfredo Solis Palma, an undocumented migrant, on a trail east of Douglas. Solis Palma, 28, had thrown rocks at Agent Neil Hamby and his dog, and other agents. Torres Vasquez chased him for 600 yards, then shot him, a Cochise County Sheriff’s report states.
By the next afternoon, the Border Patrol’s critical incident team decided the shooting was justified, citing two agents saying that Solis Palma was in the motion of throwing a rock. That same day, the FBI’s Fisher and Nielsen (also the agents in the LaMadrid case), cited the incident team’s report and recommended no further FBI investigation. Price said such determinations can be made quickly by investigators on the scene.
The FBI held the case open for more than two years; but documents obtained by The Republic show no updates to the FBI’s Solis Palma file from the day after the shooting through Aug. 13, 2013, when the heavily redacted file was disclosed.
But was the case so open-and-shut? Cochise County detectives interviewed the Border Patrol witnesses. Agent Leon Shaw, said he saw Solis raise his hand, the nearest witness, Agent Adrian Suazo, said that Solis Palma had his hands and arms cradled in front of him, as though he were holding rocks. But he wasn’t making a throwing motion, nor had he raised his hands, when Torres Vasquez shot him.
Nevertheless, Cochise County, too, closed its investigation without charges.
In use-of-force investigations, CBP and the Border Patrol decline to identify the agents involved, often fighting in court to block the release of names even of agents being sued by the families of those killed. (Those named here were identified in court files or in documents obtained from state investigations.) The FBI also redacts agents’ names from any documents it releases. It can be very difficult for the families to find out what happened or why.
Officials at CBP and at the agents’ union said agents have been disciplined for using excessive force. But they won’t say who, how many or when. “Agents are subjected to incredible scrutiny,” union attorney Jim Calle said. “But the process is exceedingly opaque.”
This lack of transparency is not the norm at many law-enforcement agencies.
The same month as the shooting of Elena Rodriguez, Texas State Trooper Miguel Avila killed two undocumented migrants hidden under a tarp in the bed of a fleeing pickup; Avila hit them while trying, from a helicopter, to shoot out the truck’s tires as it sped toward a school zone near the town of La Joya.
Within a week, the Texas Department of Public Safety released Avila’s identity and numerous details, including maps showing the truck’s route and where it was fired on. The department also said Avila was being reassigned to administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation.
Texas DPS announced an internal review of its policies on firing from aircraft. In February, the department changed its policy, barring shooting from the sky unless the aircraft had been fired upon or agents believed a deadly weapon – apart from the vehicle – was about to be used.
DPS’s findings were presented to a Hidalgo County grand jury; it declined to indict Avila, saying he had been following DPS policy.
C
iudad Juarez, which borders El Paso, for several recent years was among the deadliest cities in the world, as drug cartels battled for control of a key smuggling route.
But Maria Guadalupe Guereca never worried about letting her son Sergio, 15, accompany his older brother Omar to the Paso del Norte border crossing. It seemed a safe place for Sergio to play or hang out with friends while his brother worked in maintenance on the bridge connecting the border towns.
Then, on June 7, 2010, Sergio was shot to death by Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. Sergio and other youths had been running back and forth across the dry bed of the Rio Grande to the metal fence on the U.S. side. The FBI and CBP, without naming Mesa, said an agent fired in self-defense after he was surrounded by rock throwers.
But several cellphone videos taken from the nearby bridge later surfaced. They appear to show a different story.
Mesa wasn’t surrounded. He had tried to intercept four youths running back to Mexico across the river bed, grabbing one as the others fled. In one video, some youths can clearly be seen making throwing motions. But Guereca isn’t among them. He’s visible, peeping out from behind a pillar beneath a train trestle. He sticks his head out; Mesa fires; and the boy falls to the ground, dead.
“Why kill him? What had he done?” asked Maria Guadalupe Guereca, looking down at the spot where her son died.
The Department of Justice said last year there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Mesa on criminal or civil charges.
Attorney Cristobal Galindo, who represents Guareca’s family, said he believes three separate videos show the agent wasn’t surrounded and that a Department of Justice inquiry indicated Sergio Guereca didn’t throw any rocks. The family’s suit was dismissed by a federal district court judge in Texas, who said the court lacked jurisdiction since the victim wasn’t a U.S. citizen and his death took place on foreign soil. The case is now on appeal.
The family’s attorneys argue that the district court’s decision would in effect create a zone along the border where neither Mexican nor U.S. law would apply to any agent who fired across the border.
“Such a dangerous, implausible decision – giving the Executive the unreviewable discretion to take wholly innocent, civilian life – would be literally unprecedented,” wrote family attorney Bob Hilliard. The American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of groups have joined in that appeal.
Shootings near the border fence near urban areas are the likeliest to be taped on CBP cameras. Not so in remote areas.
Jesus Castro Romo was among 12 undocumented migrants caught in a remote part of Arizona on Nov. 16, 2010. Romo ran, but couldn’t evade Border Patrol Agent Abel Canales, who was on horseback. He shot Romo in the side.
Canales’ incident report lacks any explanation for why he opened fire. Canales told the FBI Romo threatened him with a rock. Romo, who now is disabled and lives in Nogales, Sonora, tells a different story.
“As we were walking back to the others, he kept hitting me with his lariat. He wouldn’t stop hitting me, so I ran again. And that’s when he shot me,” said Romo, sitting in a wheelchair. “He said, ‘Yeah, how’d it have been if you’d hit me in the head with a rock? I said, ‘Who grabbed a rock? I didn’t grab any rock.’ ”
Romo sued the U.S. government in January 2012. That case continues. Government attorneys deny any wrongdoing by the agent. Canales, meanwhile, was indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2011 — not for shooting Romo, but for corruption, accused of taking bribes to let vehicles carrying drugs or undocumented migrants pass the Interstate 19 checkpoint south of Tucson. In August 2012, he pleaded guilty to one count of bribery and was sentenced to eight months in prison.
To date, the fiercest criticism for the disconnect between agents’ versions of what happened came after the May 28, 2010, death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas at the San Ysidro border crossing south of San Diego. Officers said he was aggressive, even after being shocked with a Taser; but cellphone videos showed him begging for help, facedown on the ground, as a dozen agents shocked and struck him.
Sixteen members of Congress demanded that Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General investigate excessive force by CBP and the Border Patrol in this and other cases.
Hernandez’s widow, Maria Pugo, filed a wrongful-death suit. Her attorney, Eugene Iredale, demanded to see the videos from CBP’s cameras.
“San Ysidro is the busiest land crossing in the world; they have millions of crossings a year, and there are video cameras throughout the facility,” Iredale said. “But somehow, the video cameras weren’t turned on, or they were facing the other way. I could say something cynical, but I don’t need to. We have no video from any of the government cameras at the border.”
The FBI’s investigation remains open. The family’s lawsuit is moving toward trial.
H
omeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released its redacted findings on CBP’s use of force in September.
The review concluded that many CBP officers and Border Patrol agents don’t understand when and how much force they’re allowed to use. Inspectors said they couldn’t figure out how many allegations of excessive force there have been, or how many CBP investigated, because CBP doesn’t directly track such allegations or its own investigations. Hundreds of records had so little information that inspectors couldn’t determine what happened.
The Republic’s review of incident reports found similar issues. The report for the Carlos LaMadrid shooting, for example, has no narrative at all. Nor is there any narrative in one of the most notorious incidents — the December 2010 death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. He was shot to death in Arizona’s Peck Canyon by a suspected “rip” crew (bandits who prey on drug smugglers).
Two of the weapons found at the scene were later linked to the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking operation, in which the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed guns to be sold to known criminals in an effort to trace the flow of weapons to Mexican drug cartels. The incident report is so incomplete that it would be impossible to tell, merely from the report itself, that an agent died.
As part of the OIG review, the DHS asked the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-profit police chiefs’ research association, to look at how the CBP reviews use-of-force incidents. At the agency’s insistence, all the forum’s recommendations were redacted before the report was released. CBP Southwest Border Chief Bill Brooks would only say: “It is CBP’s standard practice to provide a short period of administrative leave to personnel involved in serious use-of-force incidents.”
The report didn’t discuss specific incidents or whether they were properly investigated. It called on CBP to improve how it identifies and tracks information, and to begin using that information to train agents and figure out how its policies are working.
In November, Border Patrol Chief Fisher told the Associated Press that, any recommendations notwithstanding, agents will continue to use deadly force against rock-throwers.
M
any prominent law-enforcement agencies, including the New York and Los Angeles police departments and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office make their use-of-force policies public.
By contrast, even though CBP officials insist that their use-of-force policies follow federal guidelines, the agency refuses to disclose any copies. Several years ago, in response to a lawsuit by the ACLU, CBP released a copy of its policies — with nearly every single word redacted. CBP officials wouldn’t discuss, on the record, their reasons for withholding the policy.
The Republic obtained a 2004 copy of CBP’s use-of-force policy handbook, along with limited information about revisions made in 2010.
The current policy allows agents to use deadly force when they believe there is imminent danger of death or serious injury to themselves or another person, Border Patrol Chief Fisher has said. The 2004 policy stated agents may shoot fleeing suspects only if there is probable cause to believe the person committed a felony causing serious injury or death and poses an imminent danger of death to another person. The policy doesn’t specifically address if rocks are considered deadly weapons.
In general, officers are supposed to use the minimum force necessary.
Officials at the Police Executive Research Forum said their CBP contract prevents them from discussing their redacted recommendations.
But the police forum has published two guides on use of force “best practices.” The Republic’s review found that CBP policies are often nearly the opposite of these recommendations, which are in italics.
Collect and analyze use of force data to identify trends and patterns; act on that data. CBP tracks use of force incidents; but reports often lack key information that would be necessary to identify trends and patterns. OIG noted CBP doesn’t track allegations of excessive force or assaults on agents that don’t result in use of force. CBP declined to discuss whether and how it analyzes the data but provided a statement that it is “working to improve the reporting system.”
Officers should articulate and document their reasons for a particular use of force in a given situation. One-fifth of the nearly 1,600 incident reports included no description whatsoever about the incident; hundreds more fail to say why they used force.
Demonstrate to the community that the agency is accountable to the public when force is used.
Provide as much information as possible to the public as soon as possible. Inform the public about the outcome of investigations into use of force. CBP typically issues brief press releases after deadly incident, but families of those killed consistently said it was difficult or impossible to get more information. CBP doesn’t release outcomes of internal investigations.
When force is used inappropriately, acknowledge the mistake as soon as possible. CBP officials couldn’t provide, nor could The Republic find, an example in which CBP acknowledged excessive use of force.
Be as open and transparent as possible. As noted, CBP officials won’t even discuss transparency on the record.
“The Border Patrol is a very paramilitary, very top-down, authoritarian institution, internally,” said Josiah Heyman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso who has conducted field research with the agency. “DHS cloaks itself with the mantle of national security and holds a lot of information back from the public. We’re not actually talking about issues or tactics, intelligence or surveillance … how do you justify holding back use-of-force guidelines and training materials from the public?”
The National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union, has argued vehemently against any changes in use-of-force policies. Before CBP updated its policies in 2010, it took three years to negotiate the changes with the council and the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CBP officers.
After CBP officials said recently they’ll test dashboard-mounted video cameras (and possibly lapel cameras) to reduce the use of force and protect agents against false accusations, the union condemned the idea. Union Vice President Shawn Moran said the use of lapel cameras “would result in more injured and murdered agents.”
The union also condemned any new limits on the use of deadly force, saying agents “work in a unique environment and encounter threats that are not often seen by police and sheriff’s departments.”
Statistically, it’s safer to be a Border Patrol agent than a police officer. Much safer. In 2012, local police and sheriff’s deputies in Arizona were more than five times likelier than Border Patrol agents on the Southwest border to be assaulted, and four times likelier to be assaulted with deadly weapons, based on CBP and FBI data.
T
here is limited pressure for change.
“Mexico wants to know what measures will be taken so these incidents don’t happen,” said Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Jose Antonio Meade Kuribreña. Mexico delivers a diplomatic complaint each time a Mexican citizen is killed by border agents. Mexico notes cross-border shootings violate an agreement between the countries.
But Mexico’s complaints have had no apparent impact. In the U.S., a coalition of border and human-rights groups took family members of some of those killed to Capitol Hill in late November to push lawmakers for reforms.
“Authorities need to understand that this is not a case of a bad apple or two, it’s a systemic problem,” said Andrea Guerrero, co-chair of the Southern Border Communities Coalition. “This agency has a problem with accountability and transparency, and they don’t see it.”
Historically, the Border Patrol and CBP have come under less public pressure over use-of-force than local police forces, said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina, “because you don’t have the same kind of local constituency, the layer of citizen response, that local police forces have.”
But that’s changing, Alpert said. With the growing use of technology, it will be harder for questionable incidents to slip through, he said. “But the numbers I’ve seen, even more than it protects the suspect, it protects the officer from false complaints.”
On Nov. 25, three days after meeting with Guadalupe Guerrero and other family members, 20 members of Congress asked to meet with acting CBP Commissioner Thomas Winkowski to discuss how to make the agency more transparent and accountable. That meeting is pending.
In Ciudad Juarez, Maria Guadalupe Guereca has low expectations that U.S. courts will hold agents accountable in her son’s death.
“I don’t think we’ll see justice,” she said, “just because we’re Mexican.”
In Nogales, Araceli Rodriguez’s job takes her downtown, near the border fence, every morning. Each time she sees a Border Patrol car or an agent on the U.S. side, she says, she asks herself if that might be the one who killed her son.
“If my son had been the shooter, if he had been the one who killed them, would they have waited a year in demanding justice against him? Would he still be free?” Rodriguez asked, on the first anniversary of her son’s death. “Of course not. Of course not. The Mexican government would have extradited him immediately.
“They killed a child,” she said, her voice trembling. “And they’ve done nothing about it… I don’t want excuses. I want to know who killed my son. I want justice.”
That evening, several hundred protesters joined her and her family in a march to the border fence. They wore t-shirts calling for “Justicia!” They held white balloons and candles. Some waved hand-shaped signs, in Spanish, saying, “Not one more death.”
As they marched, shopkeepers and customers came out; some joined the marchers. Outside a barber shop, one man asked what the demonstration was about.
“The boy who was killed by La Migra,” said a marcher. The man nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Everyone here knows about that.”
Later than night, when everyone had gone home, if you looked through the fence, only the ghostly image of Jose Antonio painted on a wall, half-hidden by the shadows of the fence’s bars, remained.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20131212arizona-border-patrol-deadly-force-investigation.html?nclick_check=1
December 15, 2013
by Bob Ortega and Rob O' Dell
A
ghost is haunting Nogales.
His face stares out from shop windows. It is plastered on handbills and painted on walls under the shadow of the U.S.-Mexican border fence here. Candles and doves are stenciled onto steel posts of the fence itself in his memory, each a promise not to forget the night, 14 months ago, when teenager Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot 10 times in the back and head by one or more Border Patrol agents firing through the fence into Mexico.
Similar specters haunt other border towns in Arizona, Texas and California, with the families of the dead charging that Border Patrol agents time and again have killed Mexicans and U.S. citizens with impunity.
An Arizona Republic investigation has found Border Patrol agents who use deadly force face few, if any, public repercussions, even in cases in which the justification for the shooting seems dubious.
Since 2005, on-duty Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers have killed at least 42 people, including at least 13 Americans.
These deaths, all but four of which occurred along or near the southwest border, vary from strongly justifiable to highly questionable. CBP officials say agents who use excessive force are disciplined. But they won’t say who, when, or what discipline, with the exception of a short administrative leave. In none of the 42 deaths is any agent or officer publicly known to have faced consequences — not from the Border Patrol, not from Customs and Border Protection or Homeland Security, not from the Department of Justice, and not, ultimately, from criminal or civil courts.
Internal discipline is a black hole. There have been no publicly disclosed repercussions — even when, as has happened at least three times, agents shot unarmed teenagers in the back.
That appearance of a lack of accountability has been fed by a culture of secrecy about agents’ use of deadly force.
CBP leaders refuse to release their policies, calling them law-enforcement sensitive. They won’t disclose the names of agents who use deadly force. They won’t say, in any instance, whether deadly force was justified. The lack of transparency goes against the “best practices” that national police organizations recommend for dealing with deadly-force incidents.
The Republic found the vast majority of Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers respond to conflict with restraint. Even when facing potentially deadly force, most agents and officers don’t turn to their firearms. But agents who killed mostly did so under circumstances virtually identical to hundreds of encounters that other agents resolved without lethal force and without serious injuries to either side.
In the last four years, rock-throwing incidents accounted for eight of the 24 instances in which agents killed people. The Border Patrol considers rocks deadly weapons that justify lethal force, even though it is rare for agents to be injured in “rockings,” as they call them, and even though, as agents’ reports showed, several less-lethal long-distance weapons are highly effective against rock-throwers, The Republic found.
The vast majority of rockings take place in a few, well-known, mostly urban spots along the border. But the Border Patrol doesn’t require agents working in those areas to carry or use less-lethal alternatives.
And when agents use deadly force, investigations by CBP and the FBI can take years to be released, yet can be perfunctory, and are typically opaque.
The Republic reviewed nearly 1,600 use-of-force cases by the Border Patrol and CBP between 2010 and May 2012 — some 12,000 pages of documents that it took the agency nearly a year to release.
The Republic also examined many other documents relating to use-of-force deaths and use of firearms by agents since 2005. (CBP includes both Border Patrol agents, who work between ports of entry, and Customs and Border Protection officers, who work at ports of entry.)
The investigation offers the most comprehensive look to date into the use of force by CBP and the Border Patrol, which, with roughly 43,000 agents and officers, comprise the country’s largest law-enforcement body.
Border Patrol agents do face dangers. Of the 22 who died in the line of duty in the last nine years, most died in vehicle or training accidents. Four died in direct conflicts with aggressors – including one case in which Border Patrol agents fired on one another.
Of the 42 use-of-force fatalities, some — such as the five cases in which agents shot and killed people who fired at them first — provoked little dispute.
But in nine of the 24 use-of-force deaths since 2010, agents’ accounts were contradicted by other witnesses or by other law-enforcement officers. In three cases, widely distributed videos conflicted with agents’ reports of what happened.
In reviewing these incidents, The Republic filed more than 120 Freedom of Information Act and public-records requests (and many appeals) with six federal departments or agencies and seven states.
Often, records were heavily redacted and incomplete. For example, The Republic documented, through other sources, four deaths at the hands of agents that were not included in CBP’s nearly 1,600 use-of-force incident reports. In many reports, the information is so incomplete that it’s impossible to determine what happened.
Because of that lack of transparency, it can be difficult to determine the truth when agents’ accounts differ from witnesses.
Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, in a recent report requested by members of Congress, found that many agents don’t understand their use-of-force policy. Before the report was publicly released, DHS and CBP officials blacked out recommendations that agents being assaulted with rocks should respond with less-lethal alternatives.
Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher insisted agents will continue to use deadly force against rock throwers, because rocks are potentially deadly weapons.
CBP, Homeland Security and Border Patrol officials declined repeated interview requests, agreeing only to a limited, off-the-record discussion from which the agency would approve a few limited statements. CBP officials declined to discuss the agency’s lack of transparency on the record.
But Acting Deputy CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said CBP doesn’t control the release of information or pace of investigations, pointing to the FBI and Homeland Security.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., one of the architects of a immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate that would increase the size of the Border Patrol, said border agents have “a tough job.”
The senator added: “Any loss of life incurred in the course of Border Patrol duties, as with any other government agency, should be given a close look."
O
n the night he died, Oct. 10, 2012, Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez told his grandmother, Taide Elena, that he was going to walk to the nearby Oxxo convenience store where his brother Diego worked, off Calle Internacional. That street runs below the border fence between Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Ariz.
“It’s our neighborhood,” said Elena, sitting on the couch of her cinder-block home, her hands balled together, two days after her grandson was shot. “He was a good boy; he’d come and go. I didn’t think much about it.”
Elena had been minding the boys for several months. Their father died three years earlier; their mother, Araceli Rodriguez, was trying to get the bank where she worked to transfer her to Nogales.
Jose Antonio, 16, had taken the separation hard, she said. He’d had to suspend school when they ran short of money for his tuition, but he was excited about starting classes again the next week.
That night, as the boy neared Calle Internacional, police and Border Patrol agents across the border responded to a 911 call about men hoisting bundles of marijuana over the fence.
Nogales Police K-9 officer John Zuniga spotted two men trying to climb back into Mexico. Agents yelled at the men to come down, Zuniga wrote in his report. He “heard several rocks start hitting the ground, and I looked up and could see the rocks flying through the air.”
As he took his dog back to his car, Zuniga heard gunfire. He looked up and saw an agent at the fence. Based on ballistics reports from Sonora state police, at least one agent fired 14 hollow-point bullets from a standard-issue .40-caliber Heckler & Koch pistol through the fence, killing Elena Rodriguez.
The Border Patrol hasn’t released the incident report. It hasn’t identified the agent or agents involved. In an initial statement, officials said agents were assaulted with rocks.
“After verbal commands from agents to cease were ignored, one agent then discharged his service firearm. One of the subjects appeared to have been hit,” the statement said. Subsequently, the agency has declined to confirm whether more than one agent opened fire.
But neither Zuniga nor another Nogales police officer there reported hearing any shouted orders. Three witnesses on the Mexican side said they heard no shouts before the gunfire. Isidro Alvarado, a security guard, said Elena Rodriguez was walking about 20 feet ahead of him when two youths ran past them away from the fence. Then he heard gunshots and saw Elena Rodriguez fall.
CBP won’t make public its use-of-force policy. Agency officials have said agents are authorized to fire when they face potentially deadly force, including rocks. However, if they can do so safely, agents must issue a verbal warning before firing, a Homeland Security memo states.
Where Elena Rodriguez died, the Mexican side of the fence is about 25 feet lower than the U.S. side. Due to the arc that rocks thrown over the fence there would have to follow, it would be all but impossible for a rock thrown from Mexico to hit someone near the fence on the U.S. side. And the agent (or agents) would have had to be standing at the fence to fire through the 3 and 1/2-inch gaps between the bars.
Araceli Rodriguez, who now lives in Nogales, said that, when the FBI interviewed her, she believed that “they’re looking for some way to blame my son, some way to make it his fault.” She asked why CBP hasn’t released or let her attorney see video from a border-fence camera less than 50 yards from where her son was killed.
“Do you think … that if they had a video of my son throwing rocks, they wouldn’t have produced it by now? They wouldn’t have spread it for all the world to see? Of course they would have,” she said.
CBP officials declined to discuss the case, citing an ongoing FBI investigation.
W
hether Elena Rodriguez was simply walking by or was throwing rocks, the circumstances under which he was shot were similar to those in scores of other alleged “rocking” incidents that agents resolved without firearms.
Incident reports suggest that lookouts in Mexico often throw rocks at agents to try to help drug mules or undocumented migrants get away. In 2012, rockings accounted for nearly half of the 555 assaults on agents reported by CBP.
On the whole, agents rarely turn to deadly force. In the nearly 1,600 use-of-force incident reports reviewed by The Republic, agents resorted to gunfire about 4 percent of the time, and killed people less than 1 percent of the time from 2010 through May 2012.
Eight times since 2010, Border Patrol agents killed people whom they said were throwing rocks at them, including six across the border. But in at least 160 other reported cases, agents resolved cross-border rock-throwing with less-lethal weapons that can fire, for example, balls filled with pepper spray. In those cases, no one died and almost no one was seriously hurt — including the agents.
No agent has died from being hit with a rock; agents reported injuries in two of those 160 cross-border rockings.
CBP agents and officers can carry two categories of weapons: Lethal weapons include the H&K pistols issued to all agents and optional firearms such as shotguns and M-4 rifles. “Less lethal” weapons include close and long-range options.
For close range, agents must carry either cans of pepper spray or collapsible steel batons (which look like narrow baseball bats); most carry both.
Of the long-range less-lethal weapons, agents most commonly use two: The pepper-spray balls launching system, essentially a modified paintball gun, can fire more than 10 balls a second filled with pepper spray, letting agents saturate an area with irritating vapors. The longer-range FN-303, a rifle-style weapon, uses compressed air to shoot “kinetic impact” projectiles, which are meant to incapacitate people without killing them.
Agents who used those less-lethal weapons reported they were usually highly effective at stopping rock throwers.
On Sept. 10, 2010, an agent being assaulted with rocks from the same street where Elena Rodriguez would be killed wrote that he used his pepper-spray ball launcher to saturate the area, firing “volleys of four to six rounds each near where the assailants were throwing the rocks. The rock throwers retreated from the area without further incident.”
On April 5, 2011, another agent in the same area was trying to catch someone, “when I felt a rock strike me on my right shoulder blade. I immediately turned and started saturating the area with my pepper ball launching system as several more rocks were thrown at me … the situation was put under control. There were no injuries.”
The Border Patrol doesn’t require agents to be trained in, to carry or to use any of the long-range less-lethal devices. They are strictly optional. McAleenan said CBP is looking at giving agents more “less-lethal options in high risk areas,” among other possible changes.
C
arlos LaMadrid, a 19-year-old American, was smuggling marijuana when he was killed on March 21, 2011.
LaMadrid fled toward the Mexican border as Douglas police tried to pull over his Chevy Avalanche pickup truck. Douglas Police Officer Mark Gonzales, behind him, reported that LaMadrid jammed the truck to a stop as a Border Patrol Chevy Tahoe pulled up, colliding alongside. LaMadrid and a passenger leaped out and ran to a ladder. Someone already on top of the fence began hurling rocks at the Border Patrol vehicle.
As LaMadrid climbed the ladder, Border Patrol Agent Lucas Tidwell fired his handgun through the Tahoe’s windshield, then opened the door and fired four more shots, hitting LaMadrid four times in the back and thigh. LaMadrid died that afternoon at a Sierra Vista hospital.
Two and a half years later, LaMadrid’s mother, Guadalupe Guerrero, says that her son’s actions didn’t justify killing him.
“If they’d arrested him, charged him, taken him to court, that wouldn’t have mattered,” Guerrero said. “But the Border Patrol took matters into their own hands.... The badge isn’t a license to kill.”
Immediately after the shooting, the Border Patrol whisked Tidwell back to the Douglas station. They declined to allow him to be interviewed by the Douglas police or the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office, noted a sheriff’s report. Under the Border Patrol’s union contract, agents must be allowed to meet with union representatives and attorneys before deciding whether to speak with investigators.
That afternoon, FBI Agents Jeremy Nielsen and Kyle Fisher met with the Border Patrol, the county sheriff and Douglas police, the sheriff’s report noted. The agents said the bureau would look into whether any crimes were committed against Tidwell. The bureau left it to the sheriff’s office to investigate whether the shooting of LaMadrid was justified. Douglas Price, the agent in charge of the FBI Phoenix Division, said that in joint investigations the local sheriff’s office typically handles homicides.
But the Cochise detectives had to do so without any access to Tidwell. Based on their findings – which included a video from a border camera that showed someone on the fence making a throwing motion – Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer decided not to prosecute. The DOJ held the case open for more than two years before announcing last August that it wouldn’t pursue charges against Tidwell. The FBI said cases are often open two years or more; Justice officials wouldn’t comment on why this case was open so long.
Tidwell “followed appropriate protocols; he defended himself; he wasn’t disciplined or anything for it,” by the Border Patrol, said Tidwell’s attorney, Sean Chapman. In a press release, the Justice Department said “LaMadrid was in the line of fire,” and that “there is insufficient evidence ... to disprove that the agent was acting in self-defense when he fired at the rock thrower and mistakenly struck the victim.”
Border Patrol agents or CBP officers are rarely charged with using excessive use of force or violating someone’s civil rights by killing them. In part, that’s because agents, like other law-enforcement officers, tend to be given the benefit of the doubt by federal investigators.
The Department of Justice has not been able to show any cases in which it recommended civil or criminal charges against a CBP agent or officer who killed in the line of duty in at least the past six years. An extensive review by The Republic also found no instances.
The public, too, tends to give agents the benefit of the doubt.
In 2005, two Border Patrol agents in Texas, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, shot, but didn’t kill, an unarmed drug smuggler who was fleeing. They tried to cover up the incident by falsifying reports, destroying evidence and lying to investigators.
They were convicted in 2006 on various charges and sentenced to more than a decade each in federal prison, but a swell of public pressure led President George W. Bush to commute their sentences on his last day in office.
In 2007, Rheinheimer, the Cochise County attorney, charged Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett with second-degree murder after Corbett shot to death Francisco Dominguez Rivera, 22, an undocumented migrant. Corbett maintained that Dominguez Rivera had thrown rocks at him; after two trials ended in hung juries, Rheinheimer opted not to to try Corbett a third time.
In some cases, the investigations have been perfunctory.
On Jan. 4, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Miguel Torres Vasquez shot to death Jorge Alfredo Solis Palma, an undocumented migrant, on a trail east of Douglas. Solis Palma, 28, had thrown rocks at Agent Neil Hamby and his dog, and other agents. Torres Vasquez chased him for 600 yards, then shot him, a Cochise County Sheriff’s report states.
By the next afternoon, the Border Patrol’s critical incident team decided the shooting was justified, citing two agents saying that Solis Palma was in the motion of throwing a rock. That same day, the FBI’s Fisher and Nielsen (also the agents in the LaMadrid case), cited the incident team’s report and recommended no further FBI investigation. Price said such determinations can be made quickly by investigators on the scene.
The FBI held the case open for more than two years; but documents obtained by The Republic show no updates to the FBI’s Solis Palma file from the day after the shooting through Aug. 13, 2013, when the heavily redacted file was disclosed.
But was the case so open-and-shut? Cochise County detectives interviewed the Border Patrol witnesses. Agent Leon Shaw, said he saw Solis raise his hand, the nearest witness, Agent Adrian Suazo, said that Solis Palma had his hands and arms cradled in front of him, as though he were holding rocks. But he wasn’t making a throwing motion, nor had he raised his hands, when Torres Vasquez shot him.
Nevertheless, Cochise County, too, closed its investigation without charges.
In use-of-force investigations, CBP and the Border Patrol decline to identify the agents involved, often fighting in court to block the release of names even of agents being sued by the families of those killed. (Those named here were identified in court files or in documents obtained from state investigations.) The FBI also redacts agents’ names from any documents it releases. It can be very difficult for the families to find out what happened or why.
Officials at CBP and at the agents’ union said agents have been disciplined for using excessive force. But they won’t say who, how many or when. “Agents are subjected to incredible scrutiny,” union attorney Jim Calle said. “But the process is exceedingly opaque.”
This lack of transparency is not the norm at many law-enforcement agencies.
The same month as the shooting of Elena Rodriguez, Texas State Trooper Miguel Avila killed two undocumented migrants hidden under a tarp in the bed of a fleeing pickup; Avila hit them while trying, from a helicopter, to shoot out the truck’s tires as it sped toward a school zone near the town of La Joya.
Within a week, the Texas Department of Public Safety released Avila’s identity and numerous details, including maps showing the truck’s route and where it was fired on. The department also said Avila was being reassigned to administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation.
Texas DPS announced an internal review of its policies on firing from aircraft. In February, the department changed its policy, barring shooting from the sky unless the aircraft had been fired upon or agents believed a deadly weapon – apart from the vehicle – was about to be used.
DPS’s findings were presented to a Hidalgo County grand jury; it declined to indict Avila, saying he had been following DPS policy.
C
iudad Juarez, which borders El Paso, for several recent years was among the deadliest cities in the world, as drug cartels battled for control of a key smuggling route.
But Maria Guadalupe Guereca never worried about letting her son Sergio, 15, accompany his older brother Omar to the Paso del Norte border crossing. It seemed a safe place for Sergio to play or hang out with friends while his brother worked in maintenance on the bridge connecting the border towns.
Then, on June 7, 2010, Sergio was shot to death by Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. Sergio and other youths had been running back and forth across the dry bed of the Rio Grande to the metal fence on the U.S. side. The FBI and CBP, without naming Mesa, said an agent fired in self-defense after he was surrounded by rock throwers.
But several cellphone videos taken from the nearby bridge later surfaced. They appear to show a different story.
Mesa wasn’t surrounded. He had tried to intercept four youths running back to Mexico across the river bed, grabbing one as the others fled. In one video, some youths can clearly be seen making throwing motions. But Guereca isn’t among them. He’s visible, peeping out from behind a pillar beneath a train trestle. He sticks his head out; Mesa fires; and the boy falls to the ground, dead.
“Why kill him? What had he done?” asked Maria Guadalupe Guereca, looking down at the spot where her son died.
The Department of Justice said last year there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Mesa on criminal or civil charges.
Attorney Cristobal Galindo, who represents Guareca’s family, said he believes three separate videos show the agent wasn’t surrounded and that a Department of Justice inquiry indicated Sergio Guereca didn’t throw any rocks. The family’s suit was dismissed by a federal district court judge in Texas, who said the court lacked jurisdiction since the victim wasn’t a U.S. citizen and his death took place on foreign soil. The case is now on appeal.
The family’s attorneys argue that the district court’s decision would in effect create a zone along the border where neither Mexican nor U.S. law would apply to any agent who fired across the border.
“Such a dangerous, implausible decision – giving the Executive the unreviewable discretion to take wholly innocent, civilian life – would be literally unprecedented,” wrote family attorney Bob Hilliard. The American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of groups have joined in that appeal.
Shootings near the border fence near urban areas are the likeliest to be taped on CBP cameras. Not so in remote areas.
Jesus Castro Romo was among 12 undocumented migrants caught in a remote part of Arizona on Nov. 16, 2010. Romo ran, but couldn’t evade Border Patrol Agent Abel Canales, who was on horseback. He shot Romo in the side.
Canales’ incident report lacks any explanation for why he opened fire. Canales told the FBI Romo threatened him with a rock. Romo, who now is disabled and lives in Nogales, Sonora, tells a different story.
“As we were walking back to the others, he kept hitting me with his lariat. He wouldn’t stop hitting me, so I ran again. And that’s when he shot me,” said Romo, sitting in a wheelchair. “He said, ‘Yeah, how’d it have been if you’d hit me in the head with a rock? I said, ‘Who grabbed a rock? I didn’t grab any rock.’ ”
Romo sued the U.S. government in January 2012. That case continues. Government attorneys deny any wrongdoing by the agent. Canales, meanwhile, was indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2011 — not for shooting Romo, but for corruption, accused of taking bribes to let vehicles carrying drugs or undocumented migrants pass the Interstate 19 checkpoint south of Tucson. In August 2012, he pleaded guilty to one count of bribery and was sentenced to eight months in prison.
To date, the fiercest criticism for the disconnect between agents’ versions of what happened came after the May 28, 2010, death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas at the San Ysidro border crossing south of San Diego. Officers said he was aggressive, even after being shocked with a Taser; but cellphone videos showed him begging for help, facedown on the ground, as a dozen agents shocked and struck him.
Sixteen members of Congress demanded that Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General investigate excessive force by CBP and the Border Patrol in this and other cases.
Hernandez’s widow, Maria Pugo, filed a wrongful-death suit. Her attorney, Eugene Iredale, demanded to see the videos from CBP’s cameras.
“San Ysidro is the busiest land crossing in the world; they have millions of crossings a year, and there are video cameras throughout the facility,” Iredale said. “But somehow, the video cameras weren’t turned on, or they were facing the other way. I could say something cynical, but I don’t need to. We have no video from any of the government cameras at the border.”
The FBI’s investigation remains open. The family’s lawsuit is moving toward trial.
H
omeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released its redacted findings on CBP’s use of force in September.
The review concluded that many CBP officers and Border Patrol agents don’t understand when and how much force they’re allowed to use. Inspectors said they couldn’t figure out how many allegations of excessive force there have been, or how many CBP investigated, because CBP doesn’t directly track such allegations or its own investigations. Hundreds of records had so little information that inspectors couldn’t determine what happened.
The Republic’s review of incident reports found similar issues. The report for the Carlos LaMadrid shooting, for example, has no narrative at all. Nor is there any narrative in one of the most notorious incidents — the December 2010 death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. He was shot to death in Arizona’s Peck Canyon by a suspected “rip” crew (bandits who prey on drug smugglers).
Two of the weapons found at the scene were later linked to the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking operation, in which the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed guns to be sold to known criminals in an effort to trace the flow of weapons to Mexican drug cartels. The incident report is so incomplete that it would be impossible to tell, merely from the report itself, that an agent died.
As part of the OIG review, the DHS asked the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-profit police chiefs’ research association, to look at how the CBP reviews use-of-force incidents. At the agency’s insistence, all the forum’s recommendations were redacted before the report was released. CBP Southwest Border Chief Bill Brooks would only say: “It is CBP’s standard practice to provide a short period of administrative leave to personnel involved in serious use-of-force incidents.”
The report didn’t discuss specific incidents or whether they were properly investigated. It called on CBP to improve how it identifies and tracks information, and to begin using that information to train agents and figure out how its policies are working.
In November, Border Patrol Chief Fisher told the Associated Press that, any recommendations notwithstanding, agents will continue to use deadly force against rock-throwers.
M
any prominent law-enforcement agencies, including the New York and Los Angeles police departments and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office make their use-of-force policies public.
By contrast, even though CBP officials insist that their use-of-force policies follow federal guidelines, the agency refuses to disclose any copies. Several years ago, in response to a lawsuit by the ACLU, CBP released a copy of its policies — with nearly every single word redacted. CBP officials wouldn’t discuss, on the record, their reasons for withholding the policy.
The Republic obtained a 2004 copy of CBP’s use-of-force policy handbook, along with limited information about revisions made in 2010.
The current policy allows agents to use deadly force when they believe there is imminent danger of death or serious injury to themselves or another person, Border Patrol Chief Fisher has said. The 2004 policy stated agents may shoot fleeing suspects only if there is probable cause to believe the person committed a felony causing serious injury or death and poses an imminent danger of death to another person. The policy doesn’t specifically address if rocks are considered deadly weapons.
In general, officers are supposed to use the minimum force necessary.
Officials at the Police Executive Research Forum said their CBP contract prevents them from discussing their redacted recommendations.
But the police forum has published two guides on use of force “best practices.” The Republic’s review found that CBP policies are often nearly the opposite of these recommendations, which are in italics.
Collect and analyze use of force data to identify trends and patterns; act on that data. CBP tracks use of force incidents; but reports often lack key information that would be necessary to identify trends and patterns. OIG noted CBP doesn’t track allegations of excessive force or assaults on agents that don’t result in use of force. CBP declined to discuss whether and how it analyzes the data but provided a statement that it is “working to improve the reporting system.”
Officers should articulate and document their reasons for a particular use of force in a given situation. One-fifth of the nearly 1,600 incident reports included no description whatsoever about the incident; hundreds more fail to say why they used force.
Demonstrate to the community that the agency is accountable to the public when force is used.
Provide as much information as possible to the public as soon as possible. Inform the public about the outcome of investigations into use of force. CBP typically issues brief press releases after deadly incident, but families of those killed consistently said it was difficult or impossible to get more information. CBP doesn’t release outcomes of internal investigations.
When force is used inappropriately, acknowledge the mistake as soon as possible. CBP officials couldn’t provide, nor could The Republic find, an example in which CBP acknowledged excessive use of force.
Be as open and transparent as possible. As noted, CBP officials won’t even discuss transparency on the record.
“The Border Patrol is a very paramilitary, very top-down, authoritarian institution, internally,” said Josiah Heyman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso who has conducted field research with the agency. “DHS cloaks itself with the mantle of national security and holds a lot of information back from the public. We’re not actually talking about issues or tactics, intelligence or surveillance … how do you justify holding back use-of-force guidelines and training materials from the public?”
The National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union, has argued vehemently against any changes in use-of-force policies. Before CBP updated its policies in 2010, it took three years to negotiate the changes with the council and the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CBP officers.
After CBP officials said recently they’ll test dashboard-mounted video cameras (and possibly lapel cameras) to reduce the use of force and protect agents against false accusations, the union condemned the idea. Union Vice President Shawn Moran said the use of lapel cameras “would result in more injured and murdered agents.”
The union also condemned any new limits on the use of deadly force, saying agents “work in a unique environment and encounter threats that are not often seen by police and sheriff’s departments.”
Statistically, it’s safer to be a Border Patrol agent than a police officer. Much safer. In 2012, local police and sheriff’s deputies in Arizona were more than five times likelier than Border Patrol agents on the Southwest border to be assaulted, and four times likelier to be assaulted with deadly weapons, based on CBP and FBI data.
T
here is limited pressure for change.
“Mexico wants to know what measures will be taken so these incidents don’t happen,” said Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Jose Antonio Meade Kuribreña. Mexico delivers a diplomatic complaint each time a Mexican citizen is killed by border agents. Mexico notes cross-border shootings violate an agreement between the countries.
But Mexico’s complaints have had no apparent impact. In the U.S., a coalition of border and human-rights groups took family members of some of those killed to Capitol Hill in late November to push lawmakers for reforms.
“Authorities need to understand that this is not a case of a bad apple or two, it’s a systemic problem,” said Andrea Guerrero, co-chair of the Southern Border Communities Coalition. “This agency has a problem with accountability and transparency, and they don’t see it.”
Historically, the Border Patrol and CBP have come under less public pressure over use-of-force than local police forces, said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina, “because you don’t have the same kind of local constituency, the layer of citizen response, that local police forces have.”
But that’s changing, Alpert said. With the growing use of technology, it will be harder for questionable incidents to slip through, he said. “But the numbers I’ve seen, even more than it protects the suspect, it protects the officer from false complaints.”
On Nov. 25, three days after meeting with Guadalupe Guerrero and other family members, 20 members of Congress asked to meet with acting CBP Commissioner Thomas Winkowski to discuss how to make the agency more transparent and accountable. That meeting is pending.
In Ciudad Juarez, Maria Guadalupe Guereca has low expectations that U.S. courts will hold agents accountable in her son’s death.
“I don’t think we’ll see justice,” she said, “just because we’re Mexican.”
In Nogales, Araceli Rodriguez’s job takes her downtown, near the border fence, every morning. Each time she sees a Border Patrol car or an agent on the U.S. side, she says, she asks herself if that might be the one who killed her son.
“If my son had been the shooter, if he had been the one who killed them, would they have waited a year in demanding justice against him? Would he still be free?” Rodriguez asked, on the first anniversary of her son’s death. “Of course not. Of course not. The Mexican government would have extradited him immediately.
“They killed a child,” she said, her voice trembling. “And they’ve done nothing about it… I don’t want excuses. I want to know who killed my son. I want justice.”
That evening, several hundred protesters joined her and her family in a march to the border fence. They wore t-shirts calling for “Justicia!” They held white balloons and candles. Some waved hand-shaped signs, in Spanish, saying, “Not one more death.”
As they marched, shopkeepers and customers came out; some joined the marchers. Outside a barber shop, one man asked what the demonstration was about.
“The boy who was killed by La Migra,” said a marcher. The man nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Everyone here knows about that.”
Later than night, when everyone had gone home, if you looked through the fence, only the ghostly image of Jose Antonio painted on a wall, half-hidden by the shadows of the fence’s bars, remained.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20131212arizona-border-patrol-deadly-force-investigation.html?nclick_check=1
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Cross-border posada ties Joseph, Mary's journey to that of modern migrants
Arizona Daily Star
December 11, 2013
by Perla Trevizo
DOUGLAS — Separated by steel bars that divide Agua Prieta and Douglas, participants in a cross-border posada Tuesday recalled Joseph and Mary’s journey in search for lodging — and the journey of all the migrant families.
About 70 people gathered on both sides of the border to celebrate the binational posada, where participants on the Mexican side asked for refuge in the United States. Community members and migrants taking part in the event sang an adaptation of the traditional lyrics where one group asks for refuge while the other declines until they arrive at a home where they are welcomed.
“It’s a reminder to open our homes, our churches and our community to those who aren’t from here,” said Mark Adams of the binational ministry Frontera de Cristo. “And by doing so we are welcoming Christ.”
On Tuesday, instead of seeking refuge in homes, participants sang stanzas through the border fence that told the story of a migrant who left her children behind because she had no other option.
But at the end, instead of those in the United States letting the migrants in, the Douglas participants crossed into Mexico through the port of entry and sang their way to the Resource Center for Migrants, where they shared hot chocolate and sweet bread.
Even if they didn’t find shelter in their final destination, migrants who participated said it was a blessing to have found a welcoming place when they needed it the most.
Hermilo Santizo Gonzalez, 19, tried to cross through Naco last week with his 16-year-old cousin but the pair was quickly apprehended and deported.
He said he is grateful for the shelter and support he found in Agua Prieta, even if his dream of migrating to the United States didn’t come true.
“I am just grateful for how they’ve treated me here and that we are healthy,” he said during the posada, before he and his cousin headed to the bus station to go back to Chiapas.
“Many people get hurt during the journey but we will be able to go back and be with our families,” he said.
For Reyna Martinez and and her husband Francisco Garcia, a couple from Honduras who were heading to the United States when she gave birth to her son Francisco, their search for a better life ended in Mexico.
“Here we’ve been welcomed and found a lot of support,” she said outside the center.
She said they left their native Honduras in search of a better life and now they’ve found it. Her husband is working in a factory.
“The community might be divided by a fence but its united by our faith,” said Adams.
The posada was hosted by the binational ministry Frontera de Cristo, La Parroquia de la Sagrada Familia and the Migrant Resource Center in Agua Prieta. This year’s theme was families united without borders, given a record number of deportations during the Obama administration, Adams said.
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/cross-border-posada-ties-joseph-mary-s-journey-to-that/article_0ed7956a-2f36-5db3-9731-a047ae3be893.html
December 11, 2013
by Perla Trevizo
DOUGLAS — Separated by steel bars that divide Agua Prieta and Douglas, participants in a cross-border posada Tuesday recalled Joseph and Mary’s journey in search for lodging — and the journey of all the migrant families.
About 70 people gathered on both sides of the border to celebrate the binational posada, where participants on the Mexican side asked for refuge in the United States. Community members and migrants taking part in the event sang an adaptation of the traditional lyrics where one group asks for refuge while the other declines until they arrive at a home where they are welcomed.
“It’s a reminder to open our homes, our churches and our community to those who aren’t from here,” said Mark Adams of the binational ministry Frontera de Cristo. “And by doing so we are welcoming Christ.”
On Tuesday, instead of seeking refuge in homes, participants sang stanzas through the border fence that told the story of a migrant who left her children behind because she had no other option.
But at the end, instead of those in the United States letting the migrants in, the Douglas participants crossed into Mexico through the port of entry and sang their way to the Resource Center for Migrants, where they shared hot chocolate and sweet bread.
Even if they didn’t find shelter in their final destination, migrants who participated said it was a blessing to have found a welcoming place when they needed it the most.
Hermilo Santizo Gonzalez, 19, tried to cross through Naco last week with his 16-year-old cousin but the pair was quickly apprehended and deported.
He said he is grateful for the shelter and support he found in Agua Prieta, even if his dream of migrating to the United States didn’t come true.
“I am just grateful for how they’ve treated me here and that we are healthy,” he said during the posada, before he and his cousin headed to the bus station to go back to Chiapas.
“Many people get hurt during the journey but we will be able to go back and be with our families,” he said.
For Reyna Martinez and and her husband Francisco Garcia, a couple from Honduras who were heading to the United States when she gave birth to her son Francisco, their search for a better life ended in Mexico.
“Here we’ve been welcomed and found a lot of support,” she said outside the center.
She said they left their native Honduras in search of a better life and now they’ve found it. Her husband is working in a factory.
“The community might be divided by a fence but its united by our faith,” said Adams.
The posada was hosted by the binational ministry Frontera de Cristo, La Parroquia de la Sagrada Familia and the Migrant Resource Center in Agua Prieta. This year’s theme was families united without borders, given a record number of deportations during the Obama administration, Adams said.
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/cross-border-posada-ties-joseph-mary-s-journey-to-that/article_0ed7956a-2f36-5db3-9731-a047ae3be893.html
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Pharr PD: Salvadoran man loses pinky finger to border fence
The Monitor
November 18, 2013
by Daniella Diaz
PHARR — A man who scaled the border fence wound up losing a finger after it got caught in the fence, authorities said.
November 18, 2013
by Daniella Diaz
PHARR — A man who scaled the border fence wound up losing a finger after it got caught in the fence, authorities said.
Friday night, police responded to a call from U.S. Customs and Border Protection about a 22-year-old man from El Salvador who had jumped the fence, according to a Pharr police news release.
Police found Hector Anibal Aguila lying in the grass under the bridge, holding his hand up, according to the release. He told police that his hand got caught along the fence and it severed his right pinky finger.
He was transported to Knapp Medical Center in Weslaco for treatment and then was turned over to Border Patrol.
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