Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez

TRIP TO THE BORDER: Blog #5

BorderLinks Delegation:   Tucson to Nogales and Back

Participants: Anne-Marie Patrie, John Schneider, Steve Goering, Susan Ortman Goering,

March 11-14, 2013

The Second Day                                                                                         

Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez    

Submitted by Anne-Marie Patrie                                                            Sent: March 29

You probably haven’t heard of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez.  Our government agents aimed through the border fence into Mexico and shot and killed him.

 

Here is his picture:

Here’s the story:

Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was a 16 year old Mexican boy who was shot and killed by US Border Patrol Agents.   They shot him in a populated area of Nogales, Mexico, THROUGH the border fence, multiple times, with all but one of the bullets all entering his back.  Many more bullets were fired, some lodging in the building that houses a medical office and the residence for a doctor –yes, he was home surfing the Internet when the shootings occurred.    This happened in October of 2012, and the investigation by US Border Patrol is not yet complete.  There are video images of the fence and the circumstances that led to his killing, since this is a heavily patrolled and monitored area.  Yet these 4 ½ months later, there is no report. 

The story so far is that drug packages were brought over the fence by 2 men who climbed the fence.  As US Border Patrol moved in, the men dropped their drug packages and climbed back over the fence to Mexico.  At this point, with Border Patrol moving to apprehend the climbers, rocks were thrown over the fence, from Mexico, to repel the Border Patrol.  Border Patrol says that this is a common occurrence –drug traffickers hire anyone (or people are forced by drug traffickers, we don’t know) to throw rocks to distract Border Patrol.

Border Patrol considers rocks a deadly weapon, and in all honesty, in the right circumstances, they can be deadly.  The arrangement of the fence and landscape at the location of the shooting makes it extremely unlikely that the rocks could hit anything very far on the other side of the fence; the accuracy and force would be very limited.  At the site of the shooting, the border fence runs along a bluff, the street is 25 feet below the bottom of the fence; the fence itself is about 18 feet tall.  IF Jose Antonio was throwing rocks, he was throwing them over a vertical height of over 43 feet.   Imagine yourself trying to throw a rock over this high of a barrier – it would be all you could do just to get it to the vertical distance, and impossible to also have any significant horizontal distance. 

Here is a picture of the fence across the street from where Jose Antonio was killed.  Look around the site on Google maps at:  http://goo.gl/maps/ofOuc

I have questions:

The story fills me with questions.  I can’t see why capturing two drug smugglers who were crossing back into Mexico was so important that Border Patrol had to risk their lives (from rocks landing close to the fence) to apprehend them, why not just let them go back to Mexico? Why not just actually aim at the drug runners (yes that raises another set of questions)?  Why didn’t Border Patrol just move a few feet away from the fence, from where the rocks were landing, until more reinforcements arrived?  Why didn’t they fire a few shots in the air as a warning (yes, this is dangerous, too, but not as dangerous as aiming at a human and firing).  In order to shoot Jose Antonio, the agent had to put his gun through the spaces in the fence to fire.  Why did he feel so compelled to fire into a populated area?  If rock throwing is so common, why doesn’t Border Patrol have and use tear gas?  Why not have gas masks ready in their vehicles?

The story also fills me with emotions.

I feel sadness for Jose Antonio and his family.  I feel shock that I hadn’t heard about this tragic killing before I went on the Borderlinks delegation.  I feel dazed that by some crazy luck of the draw, I was born into a life without the complexities of personally living next to a militarized zone, complete with bright lighting all night long, in a place where when I turn on the water, it runs AND I can drink it without threatening my health.

 I read that the Mexican government has denounced the whole situation, but our Borderlinks guide from Mexico expects that not much more will be done, that Jose Antonio was poor and there are other problems for the Mexican government.  I remain confident that my own government and fellow citizens would be outraged and take swift and strong action if the situation was reversed.   

I am discouraged that so far there appears to be no justice for Jose Antonio or his grieving family, no report on the investigation, no known changes to policy for Border Patrol, and very little awareness in the US of the pain our country has caused a family, a neighborhood, a city. 

I have hope that if more Americans know about this, there could be some changes made to Border Patrol procedures, some compensation for Jose Antonio’s family and an apology.   There’s no bringing Jose Antonio back, but if changes are made to reduce the dangers at the border then perhaps other families can be spared the pain of losing a loved one by the actions of US Border Patrol.  I hope that over time, Americans will realize that we have a highly militarized border with our neighbor, Mexico, and with all those weapons and tension, there will be more deaths, and some of the deaths will be Americans.  In fact, two weeks before Jose Antonio was killed, Border Patrol agents had a friendly fire incident and killed a fellow agent.   

My big hope is that ultimately, Mexico will be a place that can readily support its own people with jobs and secure futures and that the US will not be importing so many illegal drugs across the border.  Both of these things would contribute to the demise of the heavily militarized border.   

Here’s a link to a story about Jose Antonio’s death in the Arizona Republic, Arizona’s largest daily newspaper.  http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/20130206border-patrol-killing-boy-new-theory.html

Photos are from http://www.azcentral.com/photo/News/Other/23694

© Anne-Marie Patrie, March 28, 2012