Juarez Teen Killed Was A Smuggler (UPDATED)
from: http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_15265670
Juarez teen had history of smuggling
By Daniel Borunda and Maggie Ybarra El Paso Times
"EL PASO - A Juárez teenager shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent had a history of smuggling immigrants across the border, federal law enforcement officials said.
The uproar over the death of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, 15, intensified on Wednesday with protests, vigils and an eyewitness video showing the deadly confrontation on the Rio Grande.
Hernandez was shot by an agent who was allegedly being attacked with rocks while trying to make an arrest near the Paso del Norte Bridge.
In Juarez, family and friends of Hernandez grieved at his casket during a memorial inside the family's small home. The boy's father had described him as a student, not a troublemaker.
But U.S. federal law enforcement officials said Hernandez was
among youthful guides who help "coyotes," or smugglers, sneak undocumented immigrants across the border.
Federal law enforcement officials said Hernandez was a known juvenille smuggler listed on records from the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which includes photos and fingerprints. Officials spoke on condition of anonimity because juvenile records are private.
Officials said Hernandez was on the El Paso juvenille smugglers most wanted list at the time of his death and that the teen's most recent charge of smuggling undocumented immigrants into the U.S. was in 2009.
Border Patrol agents have said that juveniles often serve as illegal crossing guides because they can avoid full prosecution.
Mexican officials could not confirm whether Hernandez had previously committed a crime.
Arturo Sandoval, spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office, said Hernandez's criminal history is also being investigated. Officials said that a person younger than 14 cannot be arrested in Mexico
A cell phone video filmed during the fatal shooting was aired Wednesday evening on news programs on the Spanish-language Univision television network.
The grainy video shows about four men crossing the almost dry riverbed toward a fence on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. The men then run back toward Mexico when a Border Patrol agent arrives on a bicycle and stops one man at gunpoint on the U.S. side of the concrete riverbank.
While the agent has the man on the ground, it appears at least one man with a white shirt makes a throwing motion. The video does not show what the other men are doing. The agent points his gun toward Mexico before several gunshots are heard. A body can then be seen lying on the ground under the railroad Black Bridge.
"Estan tirando piedras. Le dio, el estipido, le dio," a person says on the video. Translated, "They are throwing rocks. He hit him, that stupid one, hit him."
The video also showed the arrival of Mexican police with guns drawn before insults can be heard being yelled.
An FBI spokeswoman told the Associated Press said that Mexican soldiers pointed their rifles and chased away U.S. Border Patrol agents after the shooting.
Three Juarez bridge vendors interviewed Wednesday said they saw the Border Patrol agent shoot Hernandez and disputed claims that the teenager threatened the agent.
"The kid wasn't throwing rocks," Estelle Gonzalez said. "He was only watching."
Gonzalez sells hats on the Paso del Norte Bridge and she and some other vendors witnessed Monday's confrontation from there.
Edgar Martinez, 32, and Luis Rodriguez Rosales, 27, also said Hernandez wasn't throwing anything.
"He was shooting like crazy," Gonzalez said of the agent, adding that he fired three shots.
The Border Patrol hasn't identified the agent.
After the shooting, other Border Patrol agents hustled the bicycle agent away and picked up shell casings shortly after the shooting, the witnesses said.
Chihuahua state police confirmed Hernandez cause of death was a gunshot wound in the head. The medical examiner found a bullet inside Hernandez's head. Officials are investigating the shooting as a homicide.
The two men detained by the Border Patrol during the shooting incident were identified by FBI officials as Oscar Ivan Pineda Ayala, 29, and Agustin Alcaraz Reyes, 47, both of Mexico.
"They're probably going to be material witnesses for the investigation," Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said.
Alcaraz and Pineda are being held without bond at the federal detention facility in East El Paso.
According to jail records, Pineda faces a charge of illegal entry, and Alcaraz faces charges of illegal entry and re-entering into the United States after being deported.
Mexican government officials from Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz to the President Felipe Calder-n have condemned the shooting.
"Justicia, justicia," chanted a group of about 70 protestors in El Paso at the foot of the Paso del Norte Bridge asking for "justice" during an afternoon sun and 100 degree heat. Protesters felt the shooting was excessive force.
A Border Patrol helicopter circled overhead during the protest organized by the Border Network for Human Rights.
Wednesday night, more than 100 people attended a vigil in the Chihuahuita neighborhood in El Paso near the scene of the shooting.
"It's more than a protest. It's a way of saying we care for human life," Triya Rabindran, 39,of El Paso said while holding a lighted candle. "It is important to me because I believe in nonviolence I belive every life is special."
Andy Ramirez, national president of the Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council, said the agent was defending himself and the teen's death was being exploited by Mexican politicians.
"It's clear that Mexico was engaging in a propaganda campaign to paint the footguide as a good, clean student who was gunned down in cold blood," Ramirez said. "Calderon knew this, but sought "justice" in the form of yet another scalp, which could still yet happen.""
Supreme Court says parents can't sue US Border Patrol agent who fatally shot teenage
By Ariane de Vogue and Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 2:18 PM ET, Tue February 25, 2020
Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court said Tuesday that the parents of a Mexican youth who was shot to death in Mexico by a US Border Patrol agent standing on American soil cannot try to sue the agent in US courts for damages.
The ruling is a win for the agent and the United States government, who argued the case should not be allowed to go forward. The decision will make it harder for individuals to sue federal officers when their constitutional rights are violated.
The 5-4 ruling came down along familiar ideological lines, with the Court's five conservative justices siding with the government and its four liberal justices dissenting.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said that "regulating the conduct of agents at the border unquestionably has national security implications" and that any risk of undermining border security provides a "reason to hesitate."
The conservative justice emphasized that the circumstances surrounding the case were "tragic," but said Congress needs to act, rather than the courts.
In 2010, Sergio Hernandez, a 15-year-old Mexican citizen, was with friends on a cement culvert that separates El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The international border runs down the middle of the culvert.
Hernandez's parents say their son and the others were playing a game: crossing the border, touching a fence and then running back to Mexican soil. They accused Jesus Mesa Jr., the Border Patrol agent, of arriving on the scene and fatally shooting their son while Mesa was standing on US soil.
They wanted to sue Mesa for violating the Fourth and Fifth Amendment.
According to the government, Mesa resorted to force only after Hernandez refused to follow commands to stop throwing rocks.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by the other liberal justices, dissented, saying the claim should be heard. Ginsburg also referred to problems at the US-Mexico border that date back nearly a decade.
"Regrettably, the death of Hernández is not an isolated incident," she wrote.
"One report reviewed over 800 complaints of alleged physical, verbal, or sexual abuse lodged against Border Patrol agents between 2009 and 2012; in 97% of the complaints resulting in formal decisions, no action was taken," Ginsburg said, referring to a court filing.
Ginsburg also wrote that "there is still no good reason why Hernandez's parents should face a closed courtroom door," noting that the circumstances would have been different if Hernandez had been "running up or down the United States side of the embankment."
Hernandez's "location at the precise moment the bullet landed should not matter one whit," Ginsburg wrote, calling Mesa, the agent, "rogue."
Disagreeing with Alito, Ginsburg wrote that "neither US foreign policy nor national security is in fact endangered by the litigation."
The Justice Department declined to bring a criminal charge against Mesa in 2012 and it supported the agent in court, arguing that the family cannot come to the US courts and sue for damages.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco urged the justices in a court brief that "imposing a damages remedy on aliens injured abroad by US government officials would implicate foreign-policy considerations that are committed to the political branches" and would inject the courts into sensitive matters of international diplomacy that would "risk undermining the government's ability to speak with one voice in international affairs."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/25/polit...ase/index.html
