Art Del Cueto Witch Hunt Lonnie Swartz Border Patrol
Tucson Border Amanuensis Pleads Not Guilty in Fatal Shooting of a Mexican Boy
TUCSON — Araceli Rodriguez crossed the border for the get-go time on Friday, traveling from her dwelling in Nogales, United mexican states, to the Federal Commune Court here to face the Border Patrol agent accused of firing multiple shots into United mexican states and killing her younger son.
The agent, Lonnie Swartz, looking squarely at the judge in his first court appearance hither, and not at Ms. Rodriguez, pleaded not guilty to 2nd-degree murder.
His trial has been scheduled for Nov. 17.
"He may be tried and convicted, simply none of it will bring my son back," Ms. Rodriguez said.
The case against Mr. Swartz is being closely watched on both sides of the border because he is the first edge agent to confront federal murder charges for a cross-border shooting, despite 33 deaths in encounters with border and customs agents since January. ane, 2010. The crowd in the courtroom here included officials from the Mexican consulate, along with American lawyers and civil rights advocates — all of them eager to see if the trial sets a precedent for cross-border relations.
Ms. Rodriguez and her family unit take waited three years for their day in an American courtroom. On Oct. 10, 2012, Mr. Swartz opened fire into Mexico, emptying his .40-caliber pistol, reloading, then pulling the trigger again, court documents say. The bullets struck xvi-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodriguez 10 times. He complanate on a cracked sidewalk, across from the border contend and Mr. Swartz, under a sign that read "emergencias médicas" — medical emergencies.
Border Patrol officials said that José Antonio was throwing rocks at its agents, and that Mr. Swartz fired in self-defense. Witnesses said he was peacefully walking downwardly the street.
"We'll see what the courts decide, what the jury decides," Art Del Cueto, president of Local 2544 of the National Edge Patrol Quango, the labor union that represents agents in the Tucson Sector, the agency's largest regional partitioning. "We want justice, similar everyone else. We don't want a witch chase."
José Antonio lived in Nogales, Mexico, four blocks from i of the ports of entry that leads into Nogales, Ariz., where his grandparents live. They are United States citizens. His grandmother, Taide Elena, often spent the mean solar day at his home while his mother worked.
"He was a citizen of Mexico with a foot in the United States," Ms. Elena said.
Cross-edge connections are ubiquitous in the neighboring cities named Nogales. Mexican children commute across the border daily from their homes to school. Workers spend their paychecks in supermarkets, restaurants and disbelieve stores that sell clothes and medication on both sides. Families live split lives; relatives who are not legally permitted to visit 1 another talk and touch through the contend.
Until Mr. Swartz'southward indictment concluding month, the Justice Section had never filed criminal charges against edge agents implicated in cross-border killings. In other cases, federal prosecutors institute justification for the agents' deportment or lacked the testify required to secure an indictment and sustain a criminal charge in court. In civil lawsuits, the courts have been more divided on how to apply American law to the borderlands.
In June 2014, the U.s.a. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a lower courtroom'southward ruling saying that a Mexican teenager shot dead by a Border Patrol agent was non entitled to Fourth Amendment protections considering he was a foreign national standing on foreign soil when he died. The teenager, Sergio Hernandez Guereca, 15, was in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, under the pillars of a cantankerous-border bridge. The agent, Jesus Mesa Jr., on the other side of a spinous-wire fence, in El Paso.
The family of José Antonio invoked the Fourth Amendment in its ain lawsuit, using the same rationale articulated past Sergio'due south parents in their merits: A cocked gun and a pull on the trigger are enough to found attack, regardless of where the victim is.
And in their instance, Judge Raner C. Collins of Federal District Court endorsed their argument, allowing the lawsuit to go forward several months ago alongside the separate criminal proceeding. Peter J. Spiro, a ramble law professor at Temple Academy, described the ruling as "very elegant" considering it took into consideration the blurred divisions that the area holds.
"He best-selling that there'south something particular about this area — family connections, a Border Patrol that exercises a sure degree of control on territory that projects into Mexico — and those factors signal to the application of the Fourth Amendment in a way that fifty-fifty 50 miles into Mexico wouldn't work the same manner," Mr. Spiro said. "It says that this edge surface area is distinctive and is not equally articulate a line as the fence makes it seem."
If Mr. Swartz is convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/us/tucson-border-agent-pleads-not-guilty-in-fatal-shooting-of-a-mexican-boy.html