Fatal encounters: 97 deaths point to pattern of border agent violence across America
Source: The Guardian
In the last 15 years, agents with Customs and Border Protection have used deadly force in states up to 160 miles from the border, from Maine to California
by Sarah Macaraeg
Wed 2 May 2018 01.00 EDT
For six long years the family of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez have been caught in a legal saga seeking justice for the 16-year-old who was killed by a US border patrol agent who fired 16 times from Arizona into Mexico.
Ending criminal proceedings that have dragged on since 2012, a jury last week cleared agent Lonnie Swartz of second-degree murder and could not agree on a verdict for two lesser charges of manslaughter. The shooting has compelled judges up to the US supreme court to deliberate whether the American government can be sued in civil court for wrongful deaths on Mexican soil – placing the incident, and eight other cross-border fatal shootings, at the center of scrutiny surrounding the use of force by agents in response to allegedly thrown rocks.
However, lesser known are similar shootings which have occurred inside the US. Such as that of Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera, who was shot and killed “execution-style”, in the language of a wrongful death complaint the government paid $850,000 to settle. An Arizona agent responding to an alert from the National Guard in 2007 alleged Rivera threatened him with a rock.
Ten years later, the Department of Justice settled another wrongful death claim involving a rock-throwing allegation in California for $500,000.
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