Thread: Border Patrol Videotape Captures Immigrant Drownings

http://www.ksat.com/news/4530570/detail.html

Border Patrol Videotape Captures Immigrant Drownings
Videotape Shows Agents Trying To Save Victims

POSTED: 11:18 am CDT May 25, 2005
UPDATED: 11:27 am CDT May 25, 2005

SAN ANTONIO -- KSAT 12 News aired a U.S. Border Patrol surveillance video Tuesday night that captured the drowning of a group of Mexican nationals and the desperate rescue attempts by border agents.

The incident, captured on March 31 in Del Rio, showed four illegal immigrants trying to wade through waist-high water in the river that was rushing from a nearby dam.

Video

Watch Surveillance Video Of Incident

The video showed two of the men falling down and then managing to stand up. The men then reorganized in a single file and one by one, they went over the ledge but were unable to escape the churning water beneath the dam.

Border patrol agents tried to save the immigrants by extending bamboo poles but to no avail.

U.S. Border Patrol officials would not officially comment on the incident.

Roberto Canseco, Mexican Consul in Del Rio, said the videotape was beyond anything he could imagine.

"It was very sad," Canseco said in Spanish.

The last body was recovered weeks after the drowning.

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FYI
ABC good morning America showed this film. HOWEVER, imo, they used the typical subliminal message and language of "plight of immigrants, poor, tragedy, etc" and prefaced the entire thing with......."we warn you that this is very graphic in nature"

The entire situation infuriated me. They narrated the film with the same language and made sure that they emphasised how the "immigrants" struggled and slipped, recovered etc while the border patrol was on the banks of the river. They were kind enough to mention that the BP did try to save the immigrants to no avail.