John Burnett: U.S. Border Patrol's Response to Violence in Question John Burnett - NPR.com
go to original May 15, 2014

Patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border can be dangerous. Still, critics say there isn't enough public accountability when Border Patrol agents use deadly force.

Picnickers in a riverside park in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, react in horror as a man in a yellow baseball cap named Guillermo Arevalo lies on the bank of the Rio Grande, bleeding to death.

It's a warm Monday evening in September 2012. He has just been shot by an agent on a U.S. Border Patrol airboat on the river. The Border Patrol says the agent shot at rock throwers and that the incident is under investigation.

Witnesses say Arevalo was not throwing rocks. A woman, unseen in a jerky cellphone video (see below), begins to scream before she's drowned out by the boat's deafening engine.

"That's against the law!" she shrieks, repeatedly.

This is exactly the controversy confronting the Border Patrol these days as a chorus of critics asks: Are federal officers who guard the territorial borders of the United States above the law?

Many agents risk their lives securing the border, but they also face uncomfortable questions about their use of force.

Read the rest at NPR.com

In photo, Nora Isabel Lam Gallegos, 26, cries, Friday Sept. 7, 2012 in Nuevo Laredo, Tamalipas, Mexico, at the scene where her husband Guillermo Arevalo Pedroza, 36, was allegedly shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent Monday Sept. 3, 2012 on the Rio Grande. (Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News) This video surfaced in 2012 depicting the moments after the victim was shot. (Rubios Noticias)

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