Death in the Sands: The Horror Along the United States-Mexico Border Reece Jones - The Guardian
go to original October 6, 2016

Mexicans meet separated family members through the US-Mexico border fence in Tijuana. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Fifteen-year-old Sergio Hernandez Guereca and three teenage friends ran across the trickle of water in the concrete riverbed that is the Rio Grande, which marks the US–Mexico border, on a cloudy, hot June day in 2010. The river, which runs between El Paso and Juárez, is only centimeters deep and 15 meters wide at the border, because the US diverts most of the water into a canal before it reaches Mexico.

The audacity of the boys’ run, in broad daylight in one of the most heavily patrolled spots along the border, roused bored pedestrians inching along the Paso del Norte Bridge towards the checkpoint. Several turned on their phone cameras to record the brazen act. The videos and the searing images of the aftermath momentarily flooded the media, with channels from CNN to Univision showing the footage.

Listen: Border patrol agent says 'We enforce the laws, but we're not the ones that create them' (PRI)

Exactly what Sergio and his friends had in mind is unclear. Even at their young ages, they had to know that an agent would arrive within seconds of their shoes getting wet. Maybe they were a diversion for some other crossing nearby, or had a small package to drop for a smuggler, or, as their families would suggest later, were just doing something stupid to get their adrenaline pumping. They were teenage boys, after all.

As soon as they reached the fence on the US side, they were forced to retreat. Border patrol agent Jesus Mesa Jr ran in from the north with his gun already drawn. Sergio and two other boys easily evaded Mesa and jogged back across to the Mexican side. The fourth boy put his hands up and was detained. Seeing this, Sergio and his two friends picked up rocks and threw them at Agent Mesa. The detained boy fell to the ground; Agent Mesa dragged him by his shirt collar a few meters toward the Rio Grande, keeping his gun pointed into Mexico at the boys, who were at least 20 or 30 meters away.

...Agent Mesa fired twice across the border into Mexico. Pop, pop. Then a brief pause, followed by another pop. Pedestrians on the bridge gasped and screamed. “Idiota,” one woman said. Sergio staggered a few meters and fell beside the pylon of a railway bridge. In the photos, the pool of blood around the wound in Sergio’s head is dried and congealed on the concrete riverbed.

The US–Mexico border that took the life of Sergio Guereca is a microcosm of a global change, its increased militarization not in response to a military threat but focused entirely on preventing the movement of civilians.

Read the rest at The Guardian

Related: Border Patrol Agent: 'We Enforce the Laws, But We're Not the Ones That Create Them' (Global Nation)

Related: Texas to Revisit Issue of ID'ing Migrants' Remains Near Border (The Texas Tribune)

Related: Jeff Sessions Says Donald Trump Is Mulling Making Undocumented Immigrants ‘Self-Deport’ (The Huffington Post)

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