Just two months after a Border Patrol agent shot her 16-year-old son
in Nogales, Sonora, Araceli Rodríguez Salazar sensed silence spreading
over the case.
"I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of waiting. I want
justice," she said on a recent afternoon, standing outside her humble
home on a downtown hillside.
If the pattern holds, she'll be waiting much longer.
Even
as the number of shootings by agents increases, the system for holding
them accountable remains complicated and opaque, leaving the public in
the dark about the status of the cases, an Arizona Daily Star
investigation has found. One Arizona case has remained secret and
"ongoing" for almost three years.
Questions have sharpened after
agents shot people who apparently weren't threatening them at least
twice in Arizona over the last two years.
Still, agents get the
benefit of the doubt from the public and prosecutors, and are rarely
criminally charged. In the few cases when agents have been prosecuted in
Arizona, they've won.
That may be because the shootings were justified, but the secrecy of the process means the public may never know.
As
questions of accountability grow louder, shootings by Border Patrol
agents continue - primarily in Arizona. In the last three years agents
have shot at least 22 people nationwide. Nine of those cases have been
in Southern Arizona - four in the last two months and two just last
week.
Last Sunday, a Border Patrol agent in the Baboquivari
Mountains killed an apparent illegal immigrant - 19-year-old Guatemalan
Margarito Lopez Morelos - who, the agency said, struggled with an agent.
On Tuesday, an agent southwest of Gila Bend shot and wounded a man who,
the agency said, brandished a weapon.
Since January 2010, there
have been at least six cross-border shootings by agents, including the
one that killed Rodríguez-Salazar's son, José Antonio Elena Rodríguez.
When killed, he was on a sidewalk across the 36-foot-wide street along
the border.
Two people were on the border fence when agents
arrived at about 11 p.m. Rocks flew, though police reports leave it
unclear who threw them, and at least one agent fired into Mexico.
Elena
Rodriguez was hit at least seven times - twice in the head and five
times in the back. The walls next to him were pocked with bullet holes.
"What
would have happened if a Sonoran police officer had opened fire and
shot a 16-year-old walking along the street in Arizona?" asked Kat
Rodriguez of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a human-rights advocacy
group in Tucson. "We all know the response would be very different, and
it shouldn't be."
agent ivie's death
Early
on Oct. 2, Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie cautiously approached a
site east of Bisbee where a ground sensor had gone off. Two fellow
agents approached from another direction.
In an apparent accident,
Ivie fired at the other agents, striking one, the FBI and Cochise
County Sheriff's Department reported. The agent who was struck fired
back, killing Ivie.
Amid an outpouring of support for Ivie's
family, some found a key aspect of the case troubling: Here was a case
where an agent apparently didn't know what he was shooting at.
Border
Patrol agents are taught to use deadly force only when they or someone
else are threatened with death, agency spokesman Bill Brooks said..
However, officers everywhere must always have "target discrimination"
and fire only at the person posing the threat, said Dave Klinger, an
associate professor of criminal justice at the University of
Missouri-St. Louis.
"If I've got a guy shooting at me, I don't get
to send rounds downrange at the general area," said Klinger, who
himself shot and killed a man when he was a Los Angeles police officer.
The
same rules apply to rock-throwing, Klinger and others said. The closer
the thrower, the more likely it poses an imminent threat.
On March
21, 2011, an agent shot and killed 19-year-old Carlos LaMadrid in
Douglas. Local police had chased LaMadrid to the border fence, where a
Border Patrol vehicle collided with the one LaMadrid was driving,
Cochise County sheriff's reports show.
LaMadrid and a passenger
began climbing a ladder friends had put against the fence, and at the
same time someone atop the fence began throwing rocks at the agent. The
agent fired and killed LaMadrid as he climbed the ladder. The rock
throwers escaped into Mexico.
Cochise County Attorney Ed
Rheinheimer said he has made a decision about whether to prosecute the
agent in the LaMadrid case, but he is waiting until federal authorities
make their call so as not to influence their decision.
who's in charge?
The
FBI, Department of Homeland Security inspector general, the Border
Patrol's critical incident team and the Customs and Border Protection
Internal Affairs branch all may respond to any shooting by a Border
Patrol agent.
The U.S. Attorney's Office oversees the
investigation, and local agencies - such as a sheriff's department - may
also investigate whether state laws were broken. In Elena Rodriguez's
case, the local agency was Sonoran state police, who responded on their
side of the border.
Who's in charge, and what happens from there?
That's a tougher question. Even Jim Calle, a Tucson attorney whose job
is to defend Border Patrol agents involved in shootings or accused of
misconduct, can't pinpoint the process.
"I've been doing this for
more than a decade, and it's still confusing to me," Calle said. "That's
how the federal government operates. They're slow. It's opaque, and
they (the investigations) are always difficult."
"There are times
when the public never learns about the shooting, never mind the
process," he added. "The one thing I am sure of is that every time an
agent pulls a trigger, their conduct is critically reviewed, and it is
really, really scrubbed hard for all the details to see if they've done
anything wrong."
The families of those killed and others find it
hard to believe the cases are well-investigated because they can't see
it. One of the families stuck in the process is that of Ramses Barron
Torres, killed on the Mexican side of the border fence in Nogales,
Sonora, by a Border Patrol agent on Jan. 5, 2011.
An FBI spokesman
said at the time that Border Patrol agents were trying to arrest drug
smugglers when people started throwing rocks at them. Sonoran police
said Barron Torres was climbing on the south side of the border fence
when shot. It's unclear whether he was a rock thrower.
Now, 23 months later, he FBI says the investigation is ongoing.
Another
case has been open even longer: Jorge Solis-Palma was shot on Jan. 4,
2010, after, agents said, he threw rocks at them. The Cochise County
Attorney's Office cleared the agent two months later, but the FBI still
considers it "an ongoing matter" almost three years later.
In the
days after Barron Torres was shot, "there were reporters from here,
reporters from over there," his mother, Zelma, said in Spanish. "After a
few days, they disappeared. Up till now, I don't know anything."
names are secret
When
a Tucson police officer or a Pima County sheriff's deputy shoots and
kills somebody, the process is mostly transparent and typically quick.
Both
agencies make it a rule to inform the public of the incident quickly
and include the officer's name. The Border Patrol keeps the names of
agents involved in shootings secret - to the point that LaMadrid's
family got a court order to force the federal government to reveal the
name of the agent who shot him so they could serve him with legal
papers.
On the local level, two investigations of shootings occur.
In
one, the local homicide department looks into whether the officer broke
the law. Investigators pass their findings to the county attorney's
office for a ruling on whether charges should be filed.
In the other investigation, internal affairs decides whether the officer followed department rules and regulations.
Those cases are typically wrapped up in two to six months, attorney Calle said.
The different ways the two levels of government respond is typical, said Klinger, the University of Missouri professor.
"The
further away from the populace the seat of power is, the less
accountability there is," he said. "For whatever reason, people haven't
been making a big stink about federal use of deadly force."
In
Border Patrol shooting cases, the investigation may be in an "ongoing"
status long after FBI special agents have completed their work, said
James Turgal, special agent in charge of the agency's Phoenix division.
That may be because prosecutors from the county to the U.S. Attorney's
Office to the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., are considering
their options.
"Just because the FBI walks down to the U.S.
Attorney's Office and presents a case, it doesn't mean we get an answer
the next day," he said.
doubtful witnesses
FBI
agents enter Border Patrol shooting cases impartially, Turgal said. But
the way some cases proceeded left witnesses with doubt.
On June
7, 2010, Border Patrol agents in San Diego killed Anastasio
Hernandez-Rojas as they were expelling him from the country into
Tijuana. In a press release, San Diego police said agents had uncuffed
Hernandez-Rojas and he became violent, causing an agent to use a taser
to subdue him.
But witnesses say, and video recordings of the
incident show, Hernandez-Rojas's hands were restrained behind his back
and he was lying on the ground, screaming for help, as about a dozen
agents stood over him, when he was tased and died. The PBS program "Need
to Know" revealed the videotapes and some witness accounts in two shows
this year.
On June 7, 2010, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed
15-year-old Sergio Hernández-Guereca in a concrete canal that separates
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, from El Paso. In a news release, the FBI said
the agent fired when a group "surrounded the agent and continued to
throw rocks at him."
Witness accounts and videos show that the
agent was not surrounded and that apparently no more than one person
threw a rock at him. Nevertheless, the FBI labeled the incident as an
"assault on a federal officer."
In some cases, the aftermath of
the shootings does not inspire witnesses' confidence in investigators.
In both the San Diego and El Paso cases, witnesses who were crossing
border bridges when the shootings occurred said they were hustled away
and not questioned.
One American woman who watched the agent shoot
Hernández-Guereca said in a deposition that she refused to leave the
bridge despite a security guard shouting at her, and she spoke to
investigators only after she insisted on calling 911 and later called
the FBI.
"No one approached me and said, 'Listen, can you tell us
what happened?'" Bobbie James McDow said in a sworn deposition taken as
part of a civil lawsuit. "It was basically, 'Get off the bridge, get off
the bridge, get out of here.' "
More recently, a Nogales, Ariz.,
resident whose 911 call started chain of events that led to the killing
of Jose Antonio Elena Rodríguez across the border, said no one has
interviewed him.
Marco Gonzalez, a radio announcer who lives along
the border, called 911 the night of Oct. 10 to tell police that people
had jumped the border fence and were moving through his yard and a
neighboring street. Soon after, he saw border agents drive by, then
heard gunshots.
Neither Nogales police nor Border Patrol agents nor the FBI contacted him.
Sanctions unlikely
An agent who shoots somebody is unlikely to face prosecution or even internal discipline.
The
Border Patrol declined to say whether the agents in any of the six
recent Southern Arizona shooting cases were reprimanded. "Administrative
and disciplinary actions of our employees are not made public," agency
spokesman Brooks said in an email.
Calle, the Border Patrol
union's lawyer, said in shootings it's "exceedingly rare that an agent
faces disciplinary consequences for their conduct."
That's partly
because most shootings are legally justified, agents and attorneys said.
They argue there are more shootings now largely because more border
jumpers resist arrest.
Also, they say, agents enjoy an assumption
that they're in the right, and they face a higher threshold for
prosecution than the average citizen.
"Law enforcement officers
are given the benefit of the doubt, not only by juries and American
citizens, but inside DAs' and U.S. attorneys' offices," said Johnny
Sutton, who was U.S. attorney for the western district of Texas from
2001 to 2009. "You're always loath to prosecute a cop because you
understand they're putting their lives on the line every day."
As
U.S. attorney, Sutton ruled many shootings by agents justified and
denied prosecution, he said, but his office also put two Border Patrol
agents in prison. In 2005, agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean shot an
unarmed drug trafficker who was running away. Their conviction and
sentencing prompted a nationwide outcry led by television personalities.
President Bush commuted their sentences on his last day in office.
Beyond
the benefit of the doubt officers receive, their jobs make them less
likely to be charged in the first place. Prosecutors must consider the
likelihood of winning a conviction when taking on a case, and it's
simply harder to win a case against a cop.
Cochise County Attorney
Rheinheimer brought a second-degree murder case against Border Patrol
Agent Nicholas Corbett in 2008, arguing Corbett's January 2007 killing
of an illegal immigrant was unjustified and a crime. There were two
trials, two hung juries and finally Rheinheimer dropped the case.
The
Border Patrol agents union lambasted Rheinheimer for prosecuting,
saying "he let undue influence from the Mexican government and the
radical special-interest groups taint his decision-making ability."
Longtime
Tucson civil-rights activist Isabel Garcia, an attorney, laid the blame
for the loss on the public's misconception of the border area as a war
zone.
"Even when we get what we should get - full prosecution -
it's really hard to break that impunity," she said. "The public is very
ignorant. They believe all the ugly stuff, so of course they give the
agents full immunity."
If there's a next time, Rheinheimer said,
he would factor in his failure to convict Corbett when deciding whether
it's worth bringing charges against another agent.
That reality, he said, "is balanced against doing whatever is the right thing to do."
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/border-patrol-faces-little-accountability/article_7899cf6d-3f17-53bd-80a8-ad214b384221.html
Gang violence in Central
America has led to a startling increase in the number of children who
make the dangerous journey across the Mexican border alone in search of
asylum in the United States, according to a report by the Women's
Refugee Commission, a nonprofit that advocates for displaced women and
children.
The number of unaccompanied migrant children in U.S.
detention centers grew nearly 50%, from 6,854 in fiscal 2011 to more
than 10,000 in the nine-month period ended June 30, according to federal
statistics cited in the report, titled "Forced From Home: The Lost Boys
and Girls of Central America." With three months left in the latest
reporting period, the fiscal 2012 figures are expected to rise further.
Most of the growth came from three countries: El Salvador, with 68% more unaccompanied minors; Guatemala, with 72% more; and Honduras,
with the number more than doubling, from 1,201 to 2,477. The number of
Mexican children crossing the border alone fell in the same period.
In interviews conducted with
151 children in federal holding facilities, nearly 80% told researchers
that violence was the main reason they set out for the U.S. by
themselves, traveling with paid guides on buses or chancing the desert
trek as stowaways on top of trains.
One 16-year-old from Honduras
told the report's authors that he was threatened with physical violence
after refusing to be recruited by a gang. He could no longer attend
school safely, so he came to the U.S. to continue his studies.
The
children travel on their own because their parents are already in the
U.S., because they are fleeing domestic violence or because the family
cannot undertake the journey together, said advocates who work with
them.
"What they said is, 'If I stayed, I definitely would die.'
They knew it would be a dangerous journey, but at least there's a
chance," said Michelle Brane, director of the Women's Refugee
Commission's detention and asylum program.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection,
along with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of
Refugee Resettlement, were criticized in the report for operating
substandard detention facilities. Officials from the two agencies were
unavailable for comment.
The Federation for American Immigration
Reform, an anti-immigration group, blamed the influx of Central American
children on a new federal program granting a two-year reprieve from
deportation to some young immigrants.
"The Obama administration
has made it very clear — if you get your kids to the U.S. and keep them
here for a while, they can stay," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the
group. "That's the unmistakable message he's sent around the world. Not
surprisingly, you have parents who say, 'Let's do that.'"
Other
countries are responsible for ensuring the safety of their own citizens,
Mehlman added. Asylum should be reserved for a select few cases, or
"the potential is you could have billions of people qualifying for
political asylum in the U.S."
Most of the young border-crossers will end up going back to the countries they fled, immigrant advocates said.
The
children have no right to a court-appointed attorney in asylum
proceedings. Even with legal counsel, cases based on the threat of gang
violence have proved difficult to win. Most successful cases have
involved children who have lost their parents because of abandonment,
abuse or neglect, said Judy London, directing attorney of the
Immigrants' Rights Project at the pro bono law firm Public Counsel.
"It's
all dependent on getting an experienced lawyer," London said. "The vast
majority aren't going to get the legal representation they need, or
they're going to get it too late."
Emergency "surge" shelters to house young migrants arriving without parents have been built, said the report.
The
report likened conditions in the surge facilities, opened after October
2011 by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, to those in an emergency
hurricane shelter. The children received basic medical care, four hours
of school and some recreation but not the full slate of education and
case management offered in regular detention centers.
Because the
new centers sprung up so quickly, they often neglected to provide the
"Know Your Rights" legal orientations that are standard in detention
facilities, leaving the children clueless about their options, the
report said.
The massive increase also resulted in detainees
spending longer periods in temporary holding cells, nicknamed "freezers"
operated by Customs and Border Protection. The children described the
cells' conditions to the report's authors as having inadequate food and
water and lights on 24 hours a day, and lacking blankets in frigid
temperatures, showers and enough room to lie down.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immigration-children-20121016,0,6904349.story
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