John Carlos Frey talking:
Mexicans who have been killed as U.S. border guards shoot across the border. This is a strange and recent phenomenon. We actually have U.S. federal agents who are firing their weapons into a sovereign country. And in the past couple of years, theyve actually killed six people. Theyve actually shot 10 times into Mexico, wounding a couple of others, and in some cases we dont even know what happened. So, were talking about Mexico, our neighbor, our friend to the south, basically receiving arms, bullets from federal agents.
And the insidious part of all of this is that the U.S. public knows nothing about this. Elements about the cases, the histories, the details of these incidents are kept from the public. We dont know the agents names. We dont know why. We dont know anything about the incidents. So I traveled up and down the border talking to as many people as I could for the report.
Theres one instance in a park where a husband and wife were celebrating the birthday of their two daughters. The husband got shot and killed, shot in the heart. This is in Nuevo Laredo. They were across the river, across the Rio Grande, in Mexico. And he died, in a public park with children and families that were out for a barbecue.
If you ask the U.S. Border Patrol what their protocol is about firing across the U.S.-Mexico border, they wont give you one. So I went to Mexico, and I found out that there is an agreement between the two countries, where U.S. agents are not allowed to fire into the sovereign country of Mexico. As a matter of fact, theyre supposed to contact Mexican officials if theres an incident that emanates from the Mexico side of the border. So, as far as I could tell, these cross-border shootings are a violation of protocol, as well as peace treaties. We have actual peace treaties with the country of Mexico, where were not supposed to deal with Mexico in an armed sort of way.
Whats happening, I believe, is that the agents are poorly trained. The agents shoot first, ask questions later. We also have a policy with the U.S. federal agents that they can fire their weapons if people throw rocks. So if you throw a rock across the border, you can open fire and kill somebody. Rocks are considered lethal force. If we look at other zones of conflicts around the globe, we have actually brokered deals to try and get rock throwing and lethal force taken out of the system, but we dont do that here at the U.S.-Mexico border. We can actually fire at rock throwers.
Juan Pablo Santillán was about 70 yards away, and thats 210 feet, across a river, Rio Grande, in a bankon a bank collecting firewood for his mother, who was going to cook tamales to sell on the street. He was shot in the heart. Border Patrol agents say that he was armed and tried to fire at them. No gun was ever found on his body or at the scene. Anybody I talked to said the man never owned a gun, never shot a gun. Ballistics tests were done. He had no gun powder residue on his hands. And it looks like this was just Border Patrol agents out for target practice. This is what I heard from some unnamed sources, that Border Patrol agents actually fired at him for the hell of it.
we know that weve had the National Guard on the U.S.-Mexico border, and I think wed have military forces on the border if federal officers from Mexico shot and killed six U.S. citizens in the past two years, which is what has happened in Mexico. This would be an international incident, and I dont think that the United States would stand for it.
A couple of years ago, a 15-year-old was shot and killed in Juárez, Mexico, by a border agent. His name was Sergio Hernández Güereca. He was shot in the face and died instantly. And he was standing in Mexico. The family sued the U.S. government for wrongful death, and the case was actually thrown out because he died in Mexico. He has no standing. Mexicans cannot sue in U.S. court if the incident occurred in Mexico. So theres no legal recourse. Basically, what we have now is a system where border agents can fire their weapons into Mexico, kill someone, and not suffer any legal repercussions.
What Ive found in this particular investigation is one of the reasons this is happening is because we have poorly trained guards. In 2006 and ’07, we hired about 8,000 more, lowered standards. And we have a lot of rookies on the force now, and they’re basically taught to shoot their weapons. If we increase the Border Patrol force by thousands more, as you say, increase militarization at the border, I think were going to have more incidents here. Were talking about dealing with immigration or immigrants in a militaristic way, as opposed to in a human way. And what were seeing now is the result of using guns instead of diplomacy. And I suspect, since weve seen such an increase in the past couple of years, that this is going to escalate.
Its a terrible case of concern. We have actual large U.S. cities along the U.S.-Mexico border that are becoming militarizedSan Diego, El Paso, Nuevo Laredo, Nogaleswho have drones flying around in their backyards. They have border guards that are running up and down the border all over the place. We have thousands of armed-to-the-teeth guards that are aiming their weapons at Mexico. So it feels like a war zone down there, and I think its going to get a little bit worse.
Every time Ive tried to get responses from authorities, any sort of information, documents, any sort of answers to the questions that I had, Ive been met with mute responses. There are no responses. These cases are locked down. I dont know the names of the agents. I dont know why this has happened. In many of these cases, theres actual video. Video cameras are up and down the U.S.-Mexico border. That video is not available to the public. So these cases have been shut down and closed, not just for months; even after the investigations have concluded, we still dont get the information.
– source democracynow.org
John Carlos Frey, an investigative reporter working on behalf of the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. His latest investigation, “Over the Line,” appeared Monday in the Washington Monthly.
[What kind of country is USA? Worse than Hitler.]