Stretch of Nogales a 'flashpoint' of rocking attacks

Border Patrol won't mandate use of less-lethal weapons where attacks are frequent

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Pics: Nogales neighborhood


Map: Rocks fly at border


Report on Torres death


Rocking incidents in Nogales
Special report


Force at the border

By Rob O’Dell and Bob OrtegaThe Republic | azcentral.comSat Feb 15, 2014 11:16 PM

Editor's note: As part of The Arizona Republic’s continuing coverage of the use of force along the U.S.-Mexico border, reporters Bob Ortega and Rob O’Dell, with photographer Nick Oza, interviewed residents in a cartel-dominated neighborhood in Nogales, Sonora. The Republic withheld their identities in the story for safety reasons.


NOGALES, Sonora -- A scruffy dirt road runs along the U.S. border fence here, up and down several hilly, rugged blocks in the gritty, cartel-dominated Buenos Aires neighborhood. Anyone standing on higher ground here can watch the white-and-green Border Patrol vehicles on the U.S. side and see where the agents are at any moment.

This is where the rocks come from.
A short stretch across the fence from this road, just a few hundred yards long, is perhaps the one spot along the entire U.S.-Mexico border where Border Patrol agents are most likely to be attacked with rocks and to respond with force.

Roughly one in every six incidents along the entire 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border in which agents used force against rock throwers in recent years occurred here, across the fence from three adjacent streets leading to the fence in Nogales, Ariz., an investigation by The Arizona Republichas found.

Agents know that what they call “rockings” are a constant threat on the U.S. side along Short Street, East Street and Escalada Drive, all of which end at the border fence near the top of a large hill, just east of the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry.

Even though Border Patrol reports show that long-range less-lethal weapons, such as one that fires irritant “pepper balls,” are highly effective at dispersing rock throwers, Customs and Border Protection doesn’t require agents assigned to urban areas such as this one to carry such weapons.

Many agents do. The Republic analyzed nearly 1,600 CBP use-of-force reports nationwide from 2010 to mid-2012, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. These reports, the most recent CBP has disclosed, showed the vast majority of the time agents responded to rockings with less-lethal weapons and easily dispersed rock throwers without injury to the agents, rock throwers or bystanders in the crowded areas on both sides of the border.

Agents have several less-lethal long-range alternatives. The pepper-ball launching system, essentially a modified paintball gun, can fire more than 10 balls per second filled with pepper spray, letting agents saturate an area up to 60 feet away with irritating vapors. The longer-range FN-303, a rifle-style weapon, uses compressed air to shoot “kinetic impact” projectiles, similar to rubber bullets, which are meant to incapacitate people without killing them. The sting-ball grenade is a hand-thrown grenade that sets off a flash and a loud bang, exploding several hundred small rubber balls, quickly clearing an area.

In nearly all of the 50 incident reports in east Nogales in which one of these less-lethal devices was used, agents reported that the rock throwers retreated south into Mexico without further incident. But some agents opt not to carry these weapons. In at least three incidents where agents weren't carrying less-lethal devices, calls were made for someone to bring them so they could disperse the rock throwers.

That was the case at about 3 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2011. During a rocking on Escalada Drive, an agent radioed in, urgently asking for a pepper-ball launcher to be brought there. But moments later, an agent — the heavily redacted report doesn’t say whether it was the same one — fired his M4 rifle through the fence into Mexico.

And 17-year-old Ramses Barron Torres fell to the ground, shot through the chest.

Agent calls for less lethal device (p. 4)




An agent, the report doesn't say who, calls for a backup from any agent with a pepperball launching system.


J
ust past 2:30 on a recent sunny winter afternoon in the Buenos Aires neighborhood in Nogales, Sonora, a half-dozen young Mexicans rushed to the international border fence.
Quickly, they set metal ladders against the 20-foot-high rust-colored barrier. With what appeared to be bundles of marijuana strapped to their backs, several clambered swiftly up in two spots. From the top, they dropped ropes into the United States and slid down.
They crossed in what appeared to be plain sight of two Border Patrol sport-utility vehicles sitting perched on ridges to either side of the crossing spot, only 200 to 300 yards away. In less than 30 seconds, at least four people crossed into Arizona and disappeared amid the ravines, hillsides and houses across the fence. Neither of the Border Patrol vehicles appeared to move. Contacted later, Border Patrol officials wouldn’t say whether they caught any crossers or seized any drugs in the area that day, Jan. 27.
Photo by Nick Oza/The Republic
Four people wearing backpacks like those typically used for smuggling marijuana climb over the fence in less than 30 seconds.

As the crossers climbed the fence, a glassy-eyed man in his early 20s pedaled furiously up the road on his BMX-style bike and shouted at two Arizona Republic reporters and a photographer witnessing the crossing.

“If you take pictures of my friends we will take your cameras,” he yelled in Spanish. “Don’t take pictures. Get the f--k out of here.”

He pointed to a hill a half-mile away and told the reporters to go there. “You can’t take pictures here. You can’t stay here,” he warned.

For more than a decade, the Buenos Aires colonia, or neighborhood, has been described by Nogales residents as neglected by authorities and ceded to the cartels that control the crossings of migrants and drug runners into Arizona. The neighborhood is among the oldest and poorest in the city. Border Patrol agents say cartel lookouts watch them constantly from the hilltops here overlooking the fence, and that the cartels pay youths to throw rocks to distract or deter agents from catching crossers.

Many residents declined to speak to reporters. One glanced at another youth on a BMX bike and muttered about lookouts. The youth he looked at seemed surprised when a reporter approached.

“You should be careful,” said the youth, circling on his bike. “This is a mafia area, the territory of piratas.” He said he didn’t know anything about anyone ever throwing rocks.

Not knowing seems to be a survival skill here.

“I come home from work, I go straight into my house; I don’t see anything; I don’t know anything,” snapped a small older woman, gray hair in a tight bun, whose home faces the border fence.

But not everyone fears talking. Another longtime resident said she’s seen youths throwing rocks at agents many times. She glanced down the unpaved street. Rocks are plentiful.

“They throw sometimes when the agents come, and I’ve seen them fire back. The pepper spray is very strong,” she said. “I worry about my kids.”

Her brother interrupted. “If you provoke the agents, they’ll defend themselves.” He shrugged. “If someone was throwing rocks at me, I’d fire back, too.” Anyhow, he added, “better the pepper than bullets. The pepper won’t kill you.”


Residents who live in the shadow of the border fence in east Nogales, Ariz., live in a world that isn’t Mexico but isn’t quite like the rest of the United States, either.

Border Patrol vehicles constantly swarm the area; agent SUVs can block traffic in the neighborhood as they search for smugglers, which can happen several times a day. Closed-circuit cameras mounted on high poles look down into back yards and front stoops. Spotlights mounted on wheeled trailers wash low-lying sections of the fence in bright, harsh light all night long.

Some residents say they lock themselves in their houses when they are not outside so illegal crossers can’t enter. Residents have found smugglers hiding in their trash cans or on their front porches.

Residents stepping outside in the morning or evening can easily see someone jumping the fence as they open their doors.

“It’s an everyday thing,” said Maggie Ramirez, who lives just below the border fence on East Street. “Any time of the day.”
Joceey Leyva, speaking in front of her childhood home on Short Street, said smugglers in Mexico are constantly watching the border and seeing when there are gaps in the Border Patrol’s response. That’s when they cross.

“It’s random, it’s whenever the patrols are less,” Leyva said.
Photo by Nick Oza/The Republic
Joceey Leyva says smugglers in Mexico are constantly watching the border and seeing when there are gaps in the Border Patrol’s response.

Many residents on the American side, too, are hesitant to speak to reporters about the area, because they fear the cartels. Several residents reported that they had been threatened to keep quiet and not report drug activity in the area. Anyone who regularly goes to Mexico or has family there was particularly hesitant about speaking.

The terrain in Nogales, Sonora, to the south, sits higher than on the U.S. side. In many areas, you look up into Mexico.

But the area surrounding Short, East and Escalada streets on the U.S. side perches above downtown Nogales, forming a sort of island isolated by its elevation from the rest of town. At the top of the hill near the fence, a series of ridges and valleys run east to west, creating dips in the fence that exacerbate the difference in elevation between the American and Mexican sides.

A few heavily wooded deep ravines that run through the neighborhood on the American side offer good places for smugglers to hide or drop their bundles of marijuana. Abandoned houses, or the homes of those aiding the cartels, are also prime hiding spots.

Most residents, asked when they last saw someone jumping over the fence, answered that it was earlier that day.
On Jan. 28, Republic reporters and a photographer twice in one hour saw agents searching for people after two crossings to the American side.

At 1:15 p.m., near the top of East Street, Border Patrol agents who wouldn’t give their names said they apprehended one or more crossers, but Border Patrol officials later wouldn’t confirm this.

A second crosser went over the fence at Short Street an hour later, according to agents, and quickly made his way through the neighborhood. More than half a dozen Border Patrol agents tracked footprints in the dirt, looked in yards, climbed through wooded areas and searched abandoned houses but were unable to find the man.

Border Patrol officials would not discuss the search for a crosser or drugs in the area that afternoon.

The border jumpers often bring the Border Patrol’s SUVs roaring into the neighborhood. Ramirez said she worries about her and her neighbors’ children who can be seen playing games in the streets.

“We cannot have our doors open or our kids playing,” Ramirez said.

Few residents reported seeing rockings, which are less frequent than crossings.

Residents speculated that the rockings are an attempt to distract agents to allow smugglers and drugs to get away, or are an emotional response to the Border Patrol’s presence or actions.

Sometimes they might be a show of dominance, said Ramirez, who said she has seen several instances of people throwing rocks at agents from Mexico.

Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame said the motive for the rock throwings is simple. “If you try to stop the dope, they’ll throw rocks.”


The narratives of the rockings from use-of-force reports by Border Patrol agents on the three Nogales streets are similar. Agents see people crossing the fence, often with bundles on their back. They try to apprehend them. The agents then report being assaulted with rocks thrown by people on top of the fence or on the ground in Mexico. In some cases, the agents report rocks being thrown at them or their vehicles while on patrol.

In most incident reports The Republic reviewed, agents used either a pepper-ball launcher or other less-lethal weapons, such as the FN-303 or sting-ball grenades, to disperse the rock throwers.
On July 15, 2010, an agent responded to six smugglers near Escalada Drive who climbed over the border fence with bundles of drugs. As the agent tried to grab one of them, rocks came over the fence from Mexico. The agent fired 10 rounds from his FN-303.

“All six bundles made it across the international border fence back into Mexico and were seen leaving the area in a white Pontiac Grand Am towards the Buenos Aires neighborhood in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico,” the incident report said.

In another case, an agent was trying to catch suspects in the Short Street area on June 25, 2010, when three people in Mexico began assaulting him with rocks. Agents called in for backup fired four to six volleys from their pepperball launchers to deter the rock throwers.

The Border Patrol agent successfully apprehended the “three undocumented aliens located near the United States Mexico International boundary fence,” the report said. “All agents and subjects were able to safely move out of the range of the assailants.”

Since 2010, there have been eight incidents nationwide in which agents have killed alleged rock throwers, including six in which they fired across the border into Mexico. That includes two in Nogales: the Barron Torres case and the October 2012 shooting of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez. On Jan. 30, 2012, a Border Patrol agent fired at rock throwers in Mexico while breaking up a drug-smuggling incident near where Barron Torres was killed. An alleged rock thrower was wounded and taken to a nearby hospital.

Photo by Nick Oza/The Republic
Border Patrol agents keep watch near the fence that divides Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora.

Six people were killed in known cross-border rocking incidents between 2010-13 compared with two in 2006-09. The rise in deaths occurred even as the number of assaults against agents fell by 1,168 over the same time period.

Because of several high-profile deaths in recent years, the Border Patrol’s use-of force policies — which CBP has refused to make public — have become an issue. In response to a demand by members of Congress, Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General issued a heavily redacted report last September recommending changes to the agency’s use-of-force training and policies.

The report’s recommendations were censored. But Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher revealed one of them to the Associated Press, saying that, despite the recommendations, the Border Patrol would continue to consider rocks deadly weapons and to authorize agents to respond to rock-throwing with deadly force.

Last month, the California-based non-profit Center for Investigative Reporting reviewed an unredacted version of the OIG report. It confirmed that one recommendation called on agents to take cover, move out of range or use less-lethal weapons, and to avoid situations in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.

The Border Patrol requires agents to carry a .40-caliber handgun and one close-range less-lethal weapon, either a collapsible steel baton or a can of pepper spray. But it doesn’t require agents to be certified in or carry other less-lethal weapons.

“There’s a fundamental policy failure here, and that’s not requiring agents to be certified in the use of less-lethal force at a distance,” said Josiah Heyman, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who has studied the Border Patrol.

“These aren’t just random events,” Heyman said. “They should be analyzing specific geographical locations and tactical situations and coming up with a coherent approach. The fact officers can decide at their discretion whether to be certified in long-range less-lethal weapons, instead of it being mandated, is outrageous.

They should be taking some kind of approach that would protect the lives of officers, rock throwers and innocent civilians who might be hit by gunfire.”

A less-lethal weapon was not available in time when an agent called for one as 17-year-old Barron Torres was allegedly throwing rocks at them from Mexico in early 2011.


At 2:50 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2011, Border Patrol agents monitoring cameras along the border fence near Escalada Drive, in Nogales, reported seeing two people climb the border fence and go back into Mexico from the United States, according to a report on the Torres shooting from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Agents watching on camera said they saw an SUV in Mexico drive up to the fence. Two people got out. The report said they appeared to confront the two individuals who had just crossed into Mexico.

One person climbed back over the fence into Arizona, picked up a bundle of marijuana on the ground and took it back to Mexico. Then that person climbed back over and picked up another bundle.

An agent arrived in his service vehicle and came under attack from three to five people throwing “big rocks” from Mexico, the report said. An agent, the report doesn’t say which one, called for backup from any agent with a pepper-ball launching system.

Before that could happen, an agent shot through openings in the fence with his .223 caliber M4 rifle, striking Barron Torres in the chest. The teen was loaded into a red Dodge Durango and taken to a Sonora hospital, where he died.

The agent’s account of the shooting was almost completely redacted in the federal report, but the unredacted portion said pepper-ball launchers release “an extremely effective super irritant called PAVA pepper (Capsaicin II). The systems are contact safe, target accurate within 60 feet and provide area saturation with PAVA within a 200-foot range.”

Pepper-ball launchers can be particularly effective because they can be shot over the fence and saturate a large area, forcing rock throwers to retreat quickly or face highly irritating vapors that cling to skin and clothing.

The report said the Border Patrol cameras did not capture the agent firing, but did show Barron Torres making a throwing motion with his arm and then crumpling to the ground in mid-throw when he was shot. The agent was standing an estimated 40 feet from the fence. It is not clear exactly where Barron Torres was on the south side.

The federal government declined to pursue criminal charges because officials said the agent had a claim of self-defense and didn’t pursue civil charges because Barron Torres was standing in Mexico when he was shot.

The youth’s self-described adoptive mother, Rosa Avechoco, said she doesn’t believe he was throwing rocks. But even if he was, “a rock is not a deadly weapon in the same way a bullet is,” she said.

“They claim that they were defending themselves, but they didn’t have to shoot.”


From 2010 to mid-2012 — the 29 months covered in the data that CBP provided — there were more than 300 use-of-force incidents nationwide in which agents used force against rock throwers. Fifty of those incidents occurred at or near Short Street, East Street and Escalada Drive in eastern Nogales. There may be more, but many incident reports contained too little information to determine the location.

More than one-third of all the rockings nationwide to which agents responded with force occurred in the Nogales Station of the Tucson Sector. There are other hot spots for rocking along the border, including along the border fence in Calexico and San Diego, Calif., and on the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas. CBP had not responded by deadline to a 6-month-old Freedom of Information Act request for data since mid-2012.

Border Patrol spokesman Adame said rockings have been decreasing. They accounted for 63 out of the 152 assaults against Border Patrol agents in Arizona last fiscal year, just over 40 percent. CBP’s numbers don’t include whether the agents responded with force.

Adame said that assaults along the Arizona portion of the border dropped 46 percent from a year earlier. “It’s dropped a lot the last couple of years because of the new fence, and because we’ve made leaps and bounds in terms of our cooperation with Mexican authorities,” he said. The new fence is taller and longer than prior fencing.

Art del Cueto, president of the Border Patrol agent union local for the Tucson Sector, said he’s been subjected to rockings, but he opts not to carry a pepper-ball launcher.

Photo by Nick Oza/The Republic
A boy rides along Calle Internacional in the Buenos Aires neighborhood on the east side of Nogales, Sonora.

“There are a lot of factors that go into carrying these things,” he said. “It’s an extra piece of equipment to carry around, and it’s bulky. Not everyone is trained to use it.”

Cueto works further west in the Tucson Sector.

“I understand the question: Why not carry it if you know it’s effective? It’s a good question.” But, as the president of the union, he said, “I’m not going to Monday-morning quarterback someone’s using their weapon.”

Cueto said many of those throwing rocks at agents are teenagers hired by the cartels.

“A lot of them are young kids throwing rocks,” Cueto said. “But they’re paid to throw rocks at agents by these organizations that cross drugs and people ... they’re kids, but they’re there for a reason.”

Contact the reporters at rob.odell@arizonarepublic.com and bob.ortega@arizonarepublic.com.

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