Over the Line: What Happens When the U.S. Border Patrol Kills in Mexico? Taylor Dolven - VICE News | |
go to original June 9, 2017 |
If José Alfredo Yanez Reyes’ body had hit the ground just a few feet to the south, things might be different. When he was shot and killed by a U.S. border patrol officer on June 21, 2011, after attempting to cross into the United States, his body landed along the invisible line that separates his native Mexico from California. His feet lay in San Ysidro, but his bloodied head lay in Tijuana.
The precise location of his body came to matter when Yanez’s family sued the officer who shot him for wrongful death. If Yanez, 40, had been killed in the United States, the family’s right to sue would be clear. But the civil rights the U.S. Constitution guarantees — and the right to take American officers of the law to court — do not apply outside the country’s borders.
For this reason, the U.S. government insisted that Yanez died in Mexico. To prove it, the U.S. attorney’s office hired a land surveyor to analyze photos of the body at the scene of the shooting. The surveyor drew a yellow line representing the border right through Yanez’s abdomen. By this accounting, the government said, “the majority of his body was in Mexico upon death.”
An exhibit prepared by Reese Water and Land Surveying Services for the United States Attorney for the Southern District of California in case 13-cv-469 shows the body of José Alfredo Yanez Reyes near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Yanez’s family disputed the finding, saying he was on American soil when the officer’s bullet struck him in the head and killed him. So far, the judge has allowed the family’s lawsuit to move forward, and the case is awaiting trial. But for at least half a dozen others killed by U.S. border patrol officers under similar circumstances, the border has become the line that separated them not only from their killers but also from their day in court.
The Yanez case is a stark example of the legal gray area in which thousands of federal officers operate every day. Cross-border shootings are rare, but they demonstrate an unresolved loophole in checks on law enforcement conduct. An upcoming Supreme Court decision in a separate 7-year-old case, Hernández v. Mesa, will clarify what rights foreign nationals have in these encounters.
“The bullet when it leaves the gun has constitutional consequences,” said Bob Hilliard, the lawyer representing the Hernández family in that case, in a February interview with VICE News Tonight. “That same bullet … is stripped — if you believe the government — of all constitutional consequences when it crosses the invisible line.”
According to the agency, Customs and Border Protection officers have killed 43 people total since 2011, when they started tracking such incidents, most of them on U.S. soil. Earlier statistics — even on fatal shootings — are hard to come by.
Read the rest at VICE News
Related: US House Votes to Let Some Border Officer Applicants Skip the Polygraph (The Huffington Post)
We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!
From activities like hiking, swimming, bike riding and yoga, to restaurants offering healthy menus, Vallarta-Nayarit is the ideal place to continue - or start - your healthy lifestyle routine.