Federal Appeals Court Confirms Border Patrol Agents Can't Kill People Across the Border With Impuni
Source: ACLU
By David Hausman, Skadden Fellow, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project
August 8, 2018 | 2:15 PM
On October 10, 2012, José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, a 16-year-old boy, was shot and killed on Calle Internacional, a street in his hometown of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico by a U.S. Border Patrol Agent.
The agent, Lonnie Swartz, fired his gun through the U.S.-Mexico border fence, striking José Antonio approximately 10 times, with virtually all of the bullets entering from his back.
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Today, almost six years after José Antonio was killed, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that his mother can sue Swartz for damages. The Ninth Circuit’s decision involves several constitutional doctrines, but as the court recognized, at its core is a simple principle: “It is inconceivable that any reasonable officer could have thought that he or she could kill [José Antonio Elena Rodriguez] for no reason.”
The opinion is not only a milestone in the fight for justice for José Antonio’s family, it is the first time that a court of appeals has confirmed that the Constitution, and in particular the Fourth Amendment, applies in the context of a cross-border shooting. Indeed, this marks the first appellate case ever to apply the Fourth Amendment internationally. The ruling sets a critical precedent that Border Patrol agents cannot kill without constitutional repercussions just because the victim was across the border in Canada or Mexico.................................
Read more: https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-patrol-abuses/federal-appeals-court-confirms-border-patrol?redirect=blog/federal-appeals-court-confirms-border-patrol-agents-cant-kill-people-across-border-impunity
Whow this is major. Peace to the family.
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