Nate Blakeslee reports on members of the US Border Patrol using deadly force against rock-throwers, suggesting that part of the problem lies with the structure of the agency itself:
Policymakers and senior officials at the agency seem torn about whether the Border Patrol is an army or an enormous police force. The seeds of this identity confusion were planted shortly after 9/11, when the Border Patrol was subsumed under the newly created Department of Homeland Security and recast as one of many regiments in the nation’s war on terrorism.
The Border Patrol’s new mission was said to be aligned with that of the Army or the Navy or the NSA: to protect us from foreign invaders bent on our destruction. But while having 21,000 agents on or near the border no doubt has dissuaded some foreign elements from entering the country overland, fighting terror is not principally what those agents do. The Border Patrol arrested 364,000 people in 2012. Not a single one was an international terrorist. The vast majority were migrants in search of jobs. An agent spends most of his or her time chasing would-be nannies, construction workers, and landscapers. Even the drug mules, los mochileros, are not generally armed or dangerous.
The difference between a soldier and a police officer is more than a semantic one, and the Border Patrol’s identity crisis has genuine consequences. War and police work are fundamentally dissimilar, explains Christopher Wilson, a border-security expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “When you’re told your mission is national security, and the people you’re interacting with are not citizens – meaning they’re not the people you’re accountable to in a democratic structure – that does replicate to a certain extent the situation the military faces,” he said. “Nonetheless, they are law enforcement. And what that means is you use the minimal force needed to do your job.”
Details on the boy featured in the above newscast:
An autopsy report indicates a Mexican teen who apparently was shot to death by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in October was struck by at least eight bullets, all but one hitting him in the back. The report, provided to The Associated Press on Thursday by an attorney for the 16-year-old boy’s family, was conducted by medical examiners in Mexico and describes several other wounds, but it’s unclear if they account for additional bullets, graze wounds or shrapnel. The attorney, Luis Parra, said he believes the report bolsters his contention that the Border Patrol used excessive force in gunning down Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez. …
The Border Patrol has said several agents responded the night of Oct. 10 to reports of suspected drug smugglers along the border fence in Nogales, Ariz. The agents watched two people abandon a load of narcotics, then run back to Mexico, according to the agency. The agents were then pelted by rocks thrown from across the border. The Border Patrol said the people ignored orders to stop, and an agent opened fire. Rodriguez’s body was found on a sidewalk in Mexico not far from the fence.
Border Patrol agents generally are allowed to use lethal force against rock throwers, as the agency considers stones deadly weapons. It’s common all along the border for agents to be hit with rocks, often to distract them from making arrests.
The Dish 