7/29/2014
Nearly two years after her son was shot to death in Nogales by Border Patrol agents, Araceli Rodriguez heads to U.S. District Court in Tucson to find out who killed him.
Attorneys for Rodriguez, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said they will file suit in federal district court in Tucson early Tuesday, seeking civil damages against the agents involved in what their suit terms the "senseless and unjustified" death of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, on Oct. 10, 2012. The suit alleges that in shooting and killing the teenager, agents "used unreasonable and excessive force" in violation of Jose Antonio's Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, and that their actions were not legally justifiable or necessary. The suit doesn't specify an amount sought in damages.
Nearly two years after her son was shot to death in Nogales by Border Patrol agents, Araceli Rodriguez heads to U.S. District Court in Tucson to find out who killed him.
Twenty-two months after her son was shot to death in Nogales, Mexico, by one or more Border Patrol agents, Araceli Rodriguez is headed to court to find out who killed him.
Attorneys for Rodriguez, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said they will file suit in federal district court in Tucson early Tuesday, seeking civil damages against the agents involved in what their suit terms the "senseless and unjustified" death of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, on Oct. 10, 2012. The suit alleges that in shooting and killing the teenager, agents "used unreasonable and excessive force" in violation of Jose Antonio's Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, and that their actions were not legally justifiable or necessary. The suit doesn't specify an amount sought in damages.
"I'm looking for justice," said Araceli Rodriguez, in an interview with the Republic earlier this year. She could not be reached Monday. "I want to see the faces of my son's killers… I don't know the names of those people; I don't know anything about them."
SPECIAL PROJECT: Force at the border
The killing of Jose Antonio was one of several highly-publicized cases that helped lead to changes over the past year to how Customs and Border Protection handles the use of deadly force by CBP officers and Border Patrol agents. CBP and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, earlier this year issued new guidelines more tightly restricting when agents can use deadly force, instituted additional training, and promised greater transparency in the investigation of use-of-force incidents.
However, the identities of the agent or agents who shot Jose Antonio remain secret, and CBP has denied Freedom-of-Information-Act requests from The Republic for those identities and for video from surveillance cameras, mounted on towers about 150 from where the boy was shot, that presumably would have recorded the incident.
Rodriguez's lawsuit comes less than a month after a federal appeals court ruled that the family of another Mexican teen, killed in Ciudad Juarez in 2010, has the constitutional right to sue the Border Patrol agent who shot him across the international border. That ruling, by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, was the first nationally to determine that the family of someone shot in Mexico by agents firing from U.S. soil has the right to sue in this country.
"That is an important precedent for our case," said Luis Parra, one of the attorneys representing Araceli Rodriguez.
As The Arizona Republic reported, on the October evening Jose Antonio was killed, Border Patrol agents in Nogales, Arizona, were chasing two men who were climbing over the fence into Mexico. As agents and Nogales police officers tried to arrest the men, they said rocks were thrown over the fence from the Mexican side.
One or more Border Patrol agents fired repeatedly through the fence, hitting Jose Antonio in the back and head at least ten times. But according to Isidro Alvarado, a security guard, Jose Antonio was not throwing rocks. Alvarado said the boy was walking down the sidewalk on Calle Internacional, about 20 feet ahead of him, when two youths ran past them away from the fence, he heard gunshots, and saw Jose Antonio fall dead.
Neither Alvarado nor the Nogales police officers on the U.S. side reported hearing any warnings or commands before at least 14 shots were fired by the Border Patrol. Customs and Border Protection's use-of-force guidelines require agents to issue a verbal warning, when possible, before using deadly force.
"Just prior to the shooting, Jose Antonio was visible and not hiding … he did not pose a threat. He was doing nothing but peacefully walking down the street by himself when he was gunned down. He was not committing a crime, nor was he throwing rocks, using a weapon, or in any way threatening U.S. Border Patrol agents or anyone else," the complaint alleges.
Earlier this year, CBP released a study of its use-of-force practices by the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-profit law-enforcement research organization. The forum reviewed all deadly use-of-force cases from January 2010 through October 2012. The report, describing how agents respond to rock-throwing incidents, said "too many cases do not appear to meet the test of objective reasonableness with regard to the use of deadly force…" and added that, "The more questionable cases generally involved shootings that took place through the IBF [International Border Fence] at subjects who were throwing rocks at the agents from Mexico."
The Republic, through the use of information requests, has found seven cross-border shooting incidents involving alleged rock throwing. Border Patrol agents or CBP officers have killed 46 people while on duty since 2005, including three this year.
Are you illiterate?
ReplyDeleteHe wasn't an "illegal." He wasn't a "dreamer." He was making no attempt to cross the border fence when he was shot twice in the head and eight times in the back. He lived in Mexico, and he was walking along a street in HIS OWN COUNTRY when he was killed, you mush-brained imbecile.