Are Mexican Families of Cross-Border Shooting Victims a Step Closer to Justice? Lynne Shallcross - Al Jazeera
go to original September 17, 2014

The site in Juarez, Mexico, where Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca was shot by a Border Patrol agent in 2010. (Singeli Agnew/Al Jazeera America)

It’s been almost two years since 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodriguez was killed in the Mexican town of Nogales as he walked down a street close to his home near the U.S.-Mexico border. According to reports, on the night of Oct. 10, 2012, an unidentified Border Patrol agent opened fire on José through the steel-beamed border fence that stands on a cliff above the street where he was walking.

José was shot at least 10 times as he stood on Mexican soil — by an agent standing on U.S. soil.

Until recently, José’s family believed it was likely no one would be held responsible for his death. Since the bullets that killed José traveled from the U.S. into Mexico and because José was not a U.S. citizen, finding justice under the Constitution has been an uphill battle.

But after almost two years in legal limbo, a precedent emerged that allowed José’s family to move forward with filing a civil suit in federal district court against the agent who killed José.

In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled on another cross-border shooting case involving the death of 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, who was shot in the face and killed by a Border Patrol agent in 2010 as he stood near the U.S. border in Juarez, Mexico. A three-judge panel ruled that Sergio’s family could sue the agent responsible for his death. The decision came as a partial reversal of a previous lower court ruling, which had blocked Sergio’s family from suing the U.S. government, the agent’s supervisors and the agent. (The deaths of Sergio and José were highlighted in the 2013 Fault Lines film “Cross-Border Killings.”)

“If ever a case could be said to present an official abuse of power so arbitrary as to shock the conscience, the Appellants have alleged it here,” the Fifth Circuit ruling stated.

Read the rest at Al Jazeera

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