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August 2020
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Derechos Humanos 'Border Patrol Deadly Force Terrorizes Border Communities'
Three Deaths on the Border: New Questions
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| US Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie, funeral for Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguezl, 16, and Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever |
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
TUCSON -- Three deaths on the border involving the US Border Patrol and the Cochise County Sheriff have raised new alarms for border residents, and opened the door for new questions.
Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever was killed in an accident just two weeks before US Border Patrol agents opened fire on each other in Cochise County, killing one Border Patrol agent.
The Cochise County Record raised questions about the accident which killed Dever. Dever was killed when his truck went out of control on a forest road near Williams, Ariz., in northern Arizona on a camping trip on Sept. 18, 2012. http://www.cochisecountyrecord.com/
Although reports say the area was strewn with liquor containers, the first deputy at the scene reported otherwise. The Record points to this at Phoenix New Times. "A deputy who investigated the crash initially didn't find or smell anything in the cab that would have indicated Dever had an open container while driving or had been drinking."
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2012/09/speed_a_possible_factor_in_she.php
The obvious questions are: Was this made to look like an accident? Was Dever being chased by another vehicle at the time of the accident? Were the crime scene and evidence tampered with?
Then, two weeks later in Cochise County, Border Patrol agent Nicholas Ivie was killed. The Border Patrol agents union said the agents opened fire on one another on Oct. 2.
But why would a Border Patrol agent open fire on other Border Patrol agents? Ivie had been an agent for six years, was a devout Mormon with two young children at home. Ivie once carried a pregnant woman, barefoot and bleeding, a mile and a half for help.
The area is between Naco and Bisbee, Arizona, a known drug running corridor. The official report says the agents were responding to a tripped sensor. One of the three Border Patrol agents present was injured during the fire between agents, the other was not injured.
Now, the US Border Patrol has opened fire on a 16-year-old in Nogales, Mexico, for throwing rocks, and killed him. Last week, Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot and killed in Nogales, Mexico, allegedly by a US Border Patrol agent.
The teen was shot six times from the U.S. side of the border while he was in Mexico.
These three deaths, and the exposures of the US ATF supplying drug cartels with assault weapons, are raising new questions. Project Gunrunner began in Laredo, Texas, in 2005, according to a report from the US Justice Department. It spread to Arizona in the ATF's Operation Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.
The weapons were used in the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry near Noalges, Ariz., ICE agent Jaime Zapata in northern Mexico, and an unknown number of US and Mexican citizens. The most notorious of the Mexican cartels were trained as special forces in the US, at Fort Bragg and the School of Americas.
US Border Patrol kills teen in Mexico
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| Reuters photo |
Frontera NorteSur News: Group Calls for Border Security Oversight
October 17, 2012
Human Rights News
By Frontera NorteSur
Posted at Censored News
French translation by Christine Prat
http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/
An El Paso-based immigrant advocacy and human rights organization has renewed a demand for Washington to establish an independent oversight and review commission tasked with examining transparency, institutional violence and “the overall border enforcement strategy and its impact on border communities and families.”
The Border Network for Human Rights made the call following last week’s shooting death of 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez allegedly by a Border Patrol agent at the international line separating Nogales, Arizona, from its sister city of Nogales, Sonora.
The young man was shot six times from the U.S. side of the border while he was in Mexico, according to a lawyer representing the victim’s family. Quoted in the local press, the Border Patrol said shots were fired from U.S. territory when its agents were accosted by rock throwers after observing smugglers toss drugs over a border fence.
“Verbal commands from agents to cease were ignored,” the Border Patrol said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Victor Brabble added that video footage of the incident was turned over to the FBI.
The Mexican Embassy in the U..S. swiftly condemned the October 10 shooting, adding that preliminary information “once again raises serious doubts about the U.S. of lethal force by Border Patrol agents..”
Elena Rodriguez was buried Sunday, October 14, after 200 people paid their last respects at a Nogales mass. His relatives have retained a U.S. attorney and are considering legal action.
“We are waiting for the investigation to conclude on both sides of the border,” family lawyer Luis Parra said this week. “The family wants justice, transparency and an answer to the doubts they have about the young man’s death.”
Parra described Elena Rodriguez as “a very good young man” with no criminal record who had plans of finishing school and joining the Mexican military. The teen might have been on the way to meet his brother when he was shot and killed, Parra said.
The Nogales shooting was the third reported killing of a Mexican national by the Border Patrol since the summer. On July 7, Border Patrol bullets were blamed for the death of 29-year-old Juan Pablo Perez Santillan on the Brownsville-Matamoros border of Texas and Tamaulipas. Guillermo Arevalo Pedraza, 36, was killed in a Border Patrol shooting September 3 at the border of Laredo/Nuevo Laredo, again in the Texas and Tamaulipas corridor.
The Border Network questioned rock throwing as a standard justification for lethal shootings, expressing concern that a U.S. judge’s adverse ruling in a lawsuit filed by relatives of 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, who was shot to death on the Ciudad Juarez side of the border by a Border Patrol agent in 2010 after allegedly throwing rocks, could result in a miscarriage of justice in this month’s Nogales incident.
In a statement, Border Network Executive Director Fernando Garcia placed the shootings in the larger context of a “failed” U.S. border strategy. “We have been insisting that the consequences of massive border enforcement and militarization, specifically in the lack of accountability and oversight, have led us to a disastrous human rights and civil rights situation at the U.S.-Mexico border,” Garcia contended.
According to Garcia’s group, previous demands that President Obama use his executive power to set up an independent body to monitor, investigate and oversee the activities of the Department of Homeland Security and other border-related security agencies have gone unanswered.
Additional sources: Laopinion.com/EFE, October 16, 2012. Nuevo Dia/El Universal, October 16, 2012. Nogalesinternational.com, October 15, 2012. Article by Jonathan Clark. Meganoticias.mx, October 15, 2012. Proceso/Apro, October 11, 2012. Frontera.info/Notimex, October 11, 2012. La Jornada, September 7, 2012. Article by Martin Sanchez, Carlos Figueroa and Notimex.
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