Thread: FBI: Mexicans chased away US agents after shooting Read mor

CIUDAD JUAREZ — Pointing their rifles, Mexican security forces chased away U.S. authorities investigating the shooting of a 15-year-old Mexican by a U.S. Border Patrol agent on the banks of the Rio Grande, the FBI and witnesses told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The killing of the Mexican by U.S. authorities — the second in less than two weeks — has exposed the distrust between the two countries that lies just below the surface, and has enraged Mexicans who see the death of the boy on Mexican soil as an act of murder.

Shortly after the boy was shot, Mexican soldiers arrived at the scene and pointed their guns at the Border Patrol agents across the riverbank while bystanders screamed insults and hurled rocks and firecrackers, FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons said. She said the agents were forced to withdraw.

"It pretty quickly got very intense over on the Mexican side," she said, adding that FBI agents showed up later and resumed the investigation, even as Mexican authorities pointed guns at them from across the river.

A relative of the dead boy who had been playing with him told the AP that the Mexicans — who he described as federal police, not soldiers — pointed their guns only when the Americans waded into the mud in an apparent attempt to cross into Mexico.

The Mexican authorities accused the Americans of trying to recover evidence from Mexican soil and threatened to kill them if

they crossed the border, prompting both sides to draw their guns, said the 16-year-old boy who asked not to be further identified for fear of reprisal.

The confrontation occurred Monday night over the body of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka, who died of his wounds beside the column of a railroad bridge connecting Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.

Each government has made veiled accusations suggesting misconduct on the part of the other's law enforcement agents.

Hernandez was found 20 feet (six meters) into Mexico, and an autopsy revealed that the fatal shot was fired at a relatively close range, according to Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office. Mexican authorities said a .40 caliber shell casing was found near the body, suggesting that the Border Patrol agent might have crossed into Mexico to shoot the boy.

That would violate the rules for Border Patrol agents, who are supposed to stay on the U.S. side — and could open the agent to a Mexican homicide prosecution.

A U.S. official close to the investigation told the AP that authorities have a video showing that the Border Patrol agent did not cross into Mexico. In fact, the official said, the video shows what appear to be members of Mexican law enforcement crossing onto the U.S. side, picking something up and returning to Mexico. The official was not cleared to speak about the video and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Alejandro Pariente, Chihuahua state's regional deputy attorney general, said the U.S. Border Patrol has given him video which he is reviewing. He declined to describe it except to say that it has sped up the investigation.

The two killings have provoked anger in Mexico like no other recent controversy surrounding immigration, including Arizona's new law making it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant and President Obama's decision to send the National Guard to the border.

Although many Mexicans were unhappy with both initiatives, popular and official reaction had been subdued, in contrast to street protests seen in previous years when the U.S. has cracked down on the border. Many Mexicans have since given up hope for a quick solution to the immigration problem, while other issues including growing drug violence have taken center stage in relations between the two countries.

That has started to change with the back-to-back deaths of two Mexicans at the border: the teenager killed Monday, and migrant Anastasio Hernandez, 42, who died after a Customs and Border Protection officer shocked him with a stun gun at the San Ysidro border crossing that separates San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico. Anastasio Hernandez, who had lived in the U.S. since he was 14, was buried in San Diego on Wednesday.

Mexican news media were filled with images of the 15-year-old's bloody body and his grieving relatives. One tabloid ran a large photograph on its cover, with the banner headline "Grindaderas," salty slang that roughly translates as "things Americans do."

Mexican President Felipe Calderon pledged to "use all resources available to protect the rights of Mexican migrants," and his foreign secretary, Patricia Espinosa, said Mexico wasn't taking the Americans' word that the Border Patrol agent had been defending himself from rock-throwers when he opened fire.

Chihuahua state Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza blamed the two killings on racism fueled by Arizona's law.

"We believe that this killing, the second in recent days in the border between the two countries, is due to xenophobia and racism, derived from the approval of Arizona's anti-immigration law," Reyes said.

Meanwhile, the Border Patrol released statistics showing that assaults on agents along the border between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, were on pace to far exceed totals in the previous four years.

In the past seven months, Border Patrol agents in the El Paso sector have been assaulted 33 times, compared with 39 times in the entire previous year. Twenty-nine of those incidents were rock-throwing, compared to 31 such incidents in all of fiscal 2009.

That's what happened Monday night, when suspected illegal immigrants who ran back to Mexico began throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents detaining other immigrants, Simmons said.

At least one rock came from behind the agent, who was kneeling beside a suspected illegal immigrant whom he was holding prone on the ground, Simmons said. The agent told the rock throwers to stop, then fired his weapon several times, hitting the boy, she said. The FBI is leading the investigation because it involves an assault on a federal officer.

The agent was not injured, Simmons said.

T.J. Bonner, president of the union representing Border Patrol agents, said rock throwing aimed at Border Patrol agents is common and capable of causing serious injury.

"It is a deadly force encounter, one that justifies the use of deadly force," Bonner said.

Mexicans ridiculed that stance.

"Let's say that Anastasio and Sergio Adrian attacked the border agents, one with his fists and the other with rocks," columnist Manuel Jauregui wrote in the newspaper Reforma. "Does that mean that killing them was the only valid option?"

Read more: http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_15260544#ixzz0qTQnzqF9

http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_15260544

I just watched the video that some Mexican lady took with her cell phone of the incident. I couldn't really see what went on from that video so I don't see how they can say that it proves something. I couldn't even tell which were the agents and which were the others.
HOWEVER, when the shot rang out, I heard a woman's voice in Spanish questioning the shot and then I heard another female, in Spanish say that they're throwing rocks. And I would bet money that those on the Mexican side of the river were encouraging the rock throwers.

Originally Posted by elpasoborn

I just watched the video that some Mexican lady took with her cell phone of the incident. I couldn't really see what went on from that video so I don't see how they can say that it proves something. I couldn't even tell which were the agents and which were the others.
HOWEVER, when the shot rang out, I heard a woman's voice in Spanish questioning the shot and then I heard another female, in Spanish say that they're throwing rocks. And I would bet money that those on the Mexican side of the river were encouraging the rock throwers.

Do you have that video link?

Here's the link to the video

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/10/texas. ... tml?hpt=T2

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/10/texas. ... index.html Here's a link to the cell phone video of the shooting. It happens just like the agent said. Although I can't make out any rocks being thrown at him, you can hear the witnesses say in Spanish, "They're throwing rocks" At the end of the video you can clearly see the victim? in a stance as if he was throwing something, while another male can be seen running from behind one of the columns -which to me makes it look like they were attacking the agent with rocks from more than one location. Our gov't shouldn't even consider wrong doing on the part of this agent. After all, Joe Horn killed 2 unarmed burglars as they tried to escape with PROPERTY and he wasn't charged with any wrong doing...

And as IF.....the Border Patrol didn't learn something from the Campean and Ramos incident! Like they would even dare to try to retrieve something from the other side, cover up the facts, etc.
It seems clear to me at least that the Mexicans assume that because they do everything illegally and or wrong that we do too. The base their assumptions on what they see everyday in Mexico...not what they see going on in our country.

By the way....speaking of Ramos and Compean, I don't think we still have ever heard the truth about why the criminal was coddled and released and everything else that went on with him concerning that incident.
I have had the suspicion for quite some time that the drug dealer that they shot in the butt was in some way, related to or with Laura Bush.

http://www.racewire.org/archives/2010/0 ... video.html Okay, here's the full video. This shows someone after he has thrown? something towards the agent. You also see someone run from behind one of the columns after the shot is fired. For the deceased to have been shot below the eye, tells me he was facing the agent when he was shot. We need to be asking why the CNN video doesn't show what this one does.

Originally Posted by elpasoborn

By the way....speaking of Ramos and Compean, I don't think we still have ever heard the truth about why the criminal was coddled and released and everything else that went on with him concerning that incident.
I have had the suspicion for quite some time that the drug dealer that they shot in the butt was in some way, related to or with Laura Bush.

Laura Bush? How so? I thought the dealer who got lead in his rear was a mexican citizen.

SicNTiredInSoCal

Laura Bush is from around here. Her mother lives in the El Paso area.
I thought at the time when the Compean and Ramos thing happened that it was total overkill as far as the Justice Dept./ Sutton going after them. I mean, I can't think of any other time when a Border Patrol agent was prosecuted to that extent over an incident such as that one was. I kept asking myself what makes this illegal alien criminal drug dealer so special? There also were a lot of facts about that incident that were way overblown or lied about. Like for instance...the way they kept saying that they tried to cover the shooting up and had picked up bullet casings to get rid of the evidence. That is standard procedure for Border Patrol agents. Picking up the casings that is. It just seemed like Sutton was treating the guy as though he was someone very special and the only reason that made any sense to me about why is that perhaps he is personally associated with Laura Bush or both Bush's in some way.