From a reader:

U.S. Border Patrol Agents Are Murdering Immigrants and People in Mexico

June 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

There has been a nationwide focus on the police in the cities of this country murdering Blacks and Latinos and walking free. I wanted to write on an aspect of these murders by police that many people may not be that aware of—the killing fields along the border that are patrolled by the border cops who are murdering immigrants and people in Mexico, and how those pigs are walking free today.

The Los Angeles Times reported recently that a Border Patrol investigation into 67 shooting incidents that killed 19 people “absolved agents of criminal misconduct in all but three cases, which are still pending.” (“Border Patrol absolves itself in dozens of cases of lethal force,” by Brian Bennett, June 15, 2015)

In the past 10 years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has killed nearly 50 people, most of them unarmed. Further, not a single one of these murdering agents has been indicted for a crime in any of these incidents.

These murders include killing people who were allegedly throwing rocks... driving in their vehicles... tortured to death as they were being deported... shot in the back after being stopped for “driving with a suspicious load”... beaten to death while in detention... shot and killed as they came out of a house... shot in the back as they were running back to Mexico... and gunned down while sitting in a wheelchair.

I became enraged when I began to discover the facts in these killings that are nothing but murder.

In October 2012, José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, a 16-year-old Mexican citizen, was gunned down through the border fence as he was walking in a street in Nogales, Mexico, a few blocks from his grandmother’s house. He was shot 10 times, with eight bullets hitting him when he lay on the ground, and most of them were in his back. The murdering pigs, who were on the Arizona side of the fence, claim that some youths were throwing rocks at them—so they opened fire on José Antonio.

The exact same thing happened to Sergio Adrian Hernandez-Guereca, a 15-year-old Mexican citizen, who was murdered by a Border Patrol cop who claimed that some youths threw rocks from the Mexican side of the international bridge in El Paso, Texas. The cop shot across the border from the U.S. side when he murdered Sergio Adrian.

Then there was Juan Pablo Perez Santillán, a 30-year-old Mexican citizen, who was shot and murdered while standing on the banks of the Rio Grande River near Matamoros, Mexico—again, for allegedly throwing rocks. Witnesses to the killing in Mexico say that Juan Pablo was unarmed.

Guillermo Arévalo Pedroza, a 36-year-old Mexican, was shot and killed by Border Patrol while at a barbeque with his wife and daughters. Yet again these pigs claimed that rocks were thrown at them. But a video of the shooting didn’t show any rock throwing. Guillermo died in his nine-year-old daughter’s arms.

It goes on and on and on. Ramses Barron Torres was shot and murdered on January 5, 2011, in Nogales, Mexico—the murdering border cop alleged that Ramses threw rocks at him. The Southern Border Communities Coalition reported, “Witnesses deny he threw rocks. DOJ [U.S. Department of In-justice] stated in their press release closing their investigation that they reviewed surveillance videos, but videos have not been released publicly.” (See “39 Killed by Customs and Border Protection.”)

In 2012 alone, the border police opened fire in 22 separate incidents on alleged rock throwers, most of them youths and most of them on the Mexico side of the border. Let’s give this a new name, RTWBM (rock throwing while being Mexican), which results in a U.S. execution. How outrageous is this? U.S. border pigs shooting across the U.S.-Mexican border murdering teenagers! These are OUR youth, and murdering our youth no matter where they are in the world has to end. As Bob Avakian says:

No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that. (BAsics 1:13)

The investigation into these killings was prompted when the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times discovered a report that criticized the Border Patrol’s use of deadly force. The report, done by the Police Executive Review Forum, states that “Border Patrol agents have deliberately stepped in the path of cars apparently to justify shooting at the drivers and have fired in frustration at people throwing rocks from the Mexican side of the border.” (“Border Patrol’s use of deadly force criticized in report,” by Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2014)

The Times reported that “U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which had commissioned the review, has tried to prevent the scathing 21-page report from coming to light,” and that the “House and Senate oversight committees requested copies last fall but received only a summary that omitted the most controversial findings...” Further, the border agency rejected any restrictions that were suggested in the report on their agents in shooting at rock throwers or people’s cars.

All these murderers are walking free and have not been charged, even in cases, according to the Times, where “evidence of criminal misconduct was presented”—including the case of Carlos Lamadrid, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, who was shot three times in the back, murdered by the Border Patrol as he was climbing the border fence to go from the U.S. into Mexico.

BORDER AGENTS GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER OF LATINO AND MEXICAN PEOPLE MUST STOP! And it will take us standing up and saying NO MORE to these horrors to stop it!

INDICT, CONVICT, AND JAIL THE MURDERERS OF THE PEOPLE ALONG THE BORDER!

 

 

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