US Supreme Court Sends Case of Cross-Border Shooting of Mexican Teen Back to Lower Court John Burnett and Merrit Kennedy - NPR
go to original June 26, 2017

Maria Guadalupe Guereca, 60, visits the grave of her murdered son Sergio Hernandez Guereca at the Jardines del Recuerdo cemetery in Juarez, Mexico, earlier this year. Her son was shot by a U.S. agent across the border in 2010. (Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images)

Can the family of a slain Mexican teenager sue the federal agent who shot him across the U.S.-Mexico border for damages? The Supreme Court did not answer this question today, instead opting to send a case back to a lower court.

The case centers on a larger question: Whether the Constitution extends protection to an individual who is killed on foreign soil, even though that person is standing just a few yards outside the United States.

It also tests a long-held doctrine, called a Bivens action, in which plaintiffs are permitted to sue federal officials for breaking constitutional law. But that doctrine had never been applied outside the boundaries of the United States.

In oral arguments in February, some justices were concerned that making U.S. agents liable for their actions taken in a foreign nation could be extended to, say, a house full of noncombatants killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

Bob Hilliard, the Texas attorney for the Mexican teen's family, argued that a decision could be crafted in such a way as to only address the legally vague U.S.-Mexico borderlands, where this fatal shooting took place.

In 2010, a group of Mexican youths was playing a game of dashing across a concrete riverbed between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, to touch the U.S. border fence. A Border Patrol agent, Jesus Mesa Jr., arrived on a bicycle and detained one of the youths. Claiming he was the target of rock throwers, Mesa — who was standing on the U.S. side — pulled his handgun and shot 15-year-old Sergio Hernandez Guereca in the head as he peeked out from behind a concrete pillar on the Juarez side of the international culvert.

The family claimed the agent violated Hernandez's Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights against deadly force, even though he was a noncitizen. Hilliard, the Corpus Christi lawyer representing Hernandez's family, warned against creating "a unique no-man's land — a law-free zone in which U.S. agents can kill innocent civilians with impunity."

The FBI cleared Agent Mesa of wrongdoing, and the government has defended his immunity from civil lawsuits.

Read the rest at NPR

Related: Supreme Court Punts on Cross-Border Shooting, Two Immigration Cases (USA Today)

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!