Mother of killed Mexican teen sues U.S. Border Patrol

Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez’s family speak to reporters on Tuesday about the lawsuit filed against Border Patrol over the killing of the Mexican teen. (Twitter/@ACLUaz)

The lawsuit, Rodriguez v. John Does, claims that in killing Jose Antonio, Border Patrol agents “acted intentionally and used unreasonable and excessive force with the purpose of causing harm to Jose Antonio without legal justification.” The complaint states that the agents’ actions violated Jose Antonio’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.
SEE ALSO: Congressmen introduce bill to hold border agents accountable

Rodriguez is also demanding a jury trial and is seeking damages, including punitive damages, against the agents involved in the killing of her son.

“The U.S. border patrol agents who killed my son in a senseless act of violence are still out there and they need to be brought to justice,” Rodriguez, who lives in Nogales, Mexico, said in a statement. “The U.S. government has not held the agents who shot my son accountable and that is why I am bringing this lawsuit.”

In a statement to VOXXI, a U.S. Custom and Border Protection official said the agency could not comment on pending litigation.

Jose Antonio shot 10 times by Border Patrol

The night that Rodriguez’s son was killed, Border Patrol agents were chasing two Mexican drug smugglers on foot along the southern border fence in Nogales, Ariz.
According to Border Patrol, the agents saw two people abandon a load of narcotics on the U.S. side of the border before running back to Mexico. Border Patrol said the agents tried going after the two individuals and began firing when they ignored orders to stop throwing rocks.
The lawsuit claims that Jose Antonio “was doing nothing but peacefully walking down the street by himself when he was gunned down” by the agents. An autopsy report shows the teenager was fatally shot 10 times, with virtually all of the bullets entering his body from behind. Moments after the shooting, Jose Antonio was found dead on sidewalk, in a pool of blood, about four blocks from his home.

“He was not committing a crime, nor was he throwing rocks, using a weapon, or in any way threatening U.S. Border Patrol agents or anyone else,” the lawsuit claims.

SEE ALSO: Abuse complaints against Border Patrol rarely lead to discipline
Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that the Border Patrol agents did not issue any verbal warnings before opening fire, therefore, violating Border Patrol guidelines that require agents to issue a verbal warning, if feasible, before using deadly force. 
Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project who is representing Rodriguez in the lawsuit, said in a statement that Jose Antonio’s death is “unfortunately not unique.” He stated that on multiple occasions, Border Patrol has been known to use “excessive and unnecessary force against people on both sides of the border.”
“Agents continue to violate the Constitution with impunity,” Gelernt said.
According to the ACLU, at least 27 people have died since 2010 as a result of use of force by border agents.

CBP’s use of deadly force is questioned

Earlier this year, the Police Executive Research Forum conducted a review of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s use-of-force practices. The review analyzed all CBP use-of-deadly-force cases from January 2010 through October 2012.
On cases involving rock throwers, the forum concluded that agents sometimes “put themselves in harm’s way by remaining in close proximity to the rock throwers when moving out of range was a reasonable option.”

“Too many cases do not appear to meet the test of objective reasonableness with regard to the use of deadly force,” the forum added. “In cases where clear options to the use of deadly force exist and are not utilized in rock-throwing incidents, corrective actions should be taken.”

In addition, the forum stated that the “more questionable cases generally involved shootings that took place through the IBF [International Border Fence] at subjects who were throwing rocks at agents from Mexico.”
SEE ALSO: Border Patrol makes changes to its use of force policy
Luis Parra, an attorney for Jose Antonio’s family based in Nogales, Ariz., said he hopes the lawsuit will serve to find justice for Jose Antonio and to identify the agents who shot the 16-year-old.
“What happened to Jose Antonio should never be allowed to happen again,” Parra said in a statement. “We hope this suit will serve as a warning to agents that they will be held accountable for their actions in cross border shootings.”

The GOP lust for Latinos picks up steam

Ronald Reagan once said that Latinos were Republicans. They just didn’t know it yet.
Never before has the GOP hoped those words were truer than in the upcoming fall elections leading into the 2016 American electoral marathon better known as the presidential campaign.
It is not new that many, including some conservative Republicans, believe that Latinos hold the fate of upcoming political elections in their hands.
What is new, though, is just how diligent and undeterred the GOP has been in quietly wooing the traditionally loyal Hispanics, trying to help them discover that, as the party patron saint Ronald Reagan said, they are Republicans and just haven’t realized it.
SEE ALSO: Immigration hardliner seeks Latino vote in Texas lt. governor race
In recent months, the GOP has been spending $10 million in improving its Hispanic field operations in key states and flooding the air with Spanish-language advertisements.
The Republican National Committee has also launched “Hispanic engagement field teams” in nine states, with two dozen paid staff members on the ground reaching out to Latinos.

“The message we are going to give Latinos is about jobs, about education and about Obamacare,” says the GOP’s Rosario Marin, the California political operative who was U.S. treasurer under George W. Bush.

Marin, now a RNC advisory board member, insists that the national debate on immigration has not hurt Republicans, pointing to Chris Christie carrying 51 percent of the Hispanic vote in his gubernatorial reelection triumph last year in New Jersey, and the GOP’s David Jolly winning a special congressional election in Florida.
In fact, a Pew Hispanic Center survey agreed that immigration is not the most important issue to Latinos, ranking behind education, the economy and health care.
Marin and others maintain that the anti-Republican sentiment over the congressional impasse is exaggerated and offset by President Obama’s struggles with the immigrant community over deportations.
SEE ALSO: One year after autopsy report: Has the GOP made progress?
The GOP is also drawing encouragement from a recent Gallup poll in Texas in which more Latinos identified themselves as Republican than in the country as a whole.
Democrats hold a 30 percent advantage among Latinos over Republicans nationally, but that difference is only 19 percent in Texas, where Democrats had hoped to make inroads into the GOP’s two-decade stranglehold on the Lone Star State in this mid-term election.
One of those Texas Latinos who may go Republican this fall is James Duarte, a retired state employee and lifelong Democrat who says he can’t see himself voting for gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis – paradoxically over the issue that made her the state’s Democratic Party darling.

“I can’t get behind a candidate whose chief claim is being pro-abortion,” Duarte, an American G.I. Forum leader among Latino veterans, says of Davis, who skyrocketed to national fame last year because of a legislative filibuster opposing an abortion bill.

But Duarte’s disenchantment goes even deeper. Asked if he would be more enthusiastic over a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, he shook his head.
“I don’t see myself being any more interested in a Hillary Clinton campaign,” he said.
“I think I have just lost faith in the Democrats asking us to vote for them but not having one of us as the candidate at the top of the ticket.

“I’m waiting to see if the Republicans actually go that far. If they do. If they put someone like (Florida Senator Marco) Rubio on their national ticket, well, we’re talking a whole new ball game.”
How Republicans have been able to make those kinds of inroads with Latinos in Texas is unimaginable, given some of the headline-grabbing anti-immigrant rhetoric that has come to be associated with the GOP.
But Republicans say they have been reaching out to Latinos by distancing the mainstream GOP from the extremists and the inflammatory language.
“I understand the need to address the issue of illegal immigration, and I understand the need to secure borders, and I realize that’s critically important,” says Hector De Leon, a leader of the Associated Republicans of Texas, a Hispanic GOP group dating back to 1974.
SEE ALSO: Eva Longoria’s group looks to help Latinos build political power
“But by the same token, that issue can be addressed by not engaging in rhetoric that sounds like thinly veiled racism.”
It was in 1983, as he prepared for re-election, that President Ronald Reagan made his comment about Latinos not realizing they were Republicans.
He said it to San Antonio advertising guru Lionel Sosa, who as a political consultant would help Reagan secure a then record share of the Latino vote as he won re-election.
“When I say that Latinos share conservative values, when Ronald Reagan said that, we mean the love of family, the love of country, a commitment to personal responsibility, to hard work,” says Sosa.
“Convey those things and you will have a lot of Latinos who nod their heads and say, ‘Yes, yes, we do think alike.’ But from there, the Latino vote has to be earned just like any other.”