U.S. Border Patrol Shoots and Kills Mexican Man in Park With Family

By Fusion Staff  |  October 31, 2013 | 6:50pm
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With reporting from John Carlos Frey at the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

Last year, Mexican citizen Guillermo Arevalo was celebrating the birthday of his wife Nora and two daughters at a public park on the shore of the river separating Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, from Laredo, Texas.

Allegedly, someone in the park started throwing rocks at a passing Border Patrol boat and the agents responded with lethal force. Guillermo was shot fatally in the chest in front of his daughters. The whole thing was caught on camera by someone else in the park, and you can see Nora and her daughters rush to the fallen figure. Guillermo died hours later from his wounds.

The US Customs and Border Patrol has admitted responsibility for Guillermo’s death, but no one has been charged and the agent might still be patrolling the river.

Nora is left with no answers, and even the Mexican government hasn’t given her real legal assistance.

Over the past five years US Border Patrol agents have shot and killed at least twenty civilians, six of them on Mexican soil.

While treaties between the two countries bar U.S. law enforcement from firing their weapons into Mexico under any circumstances, there have been no prosecutions of the any US agents involved.

Once labelled The Velvet Hammer, Alice is a muckraking, grime-chasing, crime-stopping investigative producer. She is passionate about justice and interpretive dance.

 
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