CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Pointing their rifles, security forces chased away U.S. authorities investigating the shooting of a 15-year-old Mexican by a U.S. Border Patrol agent on the banks of the Rio Grande, the FBI and witnesses told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The killing of the teen by U.S. authorities — the second in less than two weeks — has exposed the distrust between the countries that lies just below the surface and has enraged Mexicans who see the death of the boy on Mexican soil as an act of murder.
Shortly after the boy was shot, soldiers arrived at the scene and pointed their guns at the Border Patrol agents across the riverbank while bystanders screamed insults and hurled rocks and firecrackers, FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons said. She said the agents were forced to withdraw.
“It pretty quickly got very intense over on the Mexican side,” she said, adding that FBI agents showed up later and resumed the investigation, even as Mexican authorities pointed guns from across the river.
Witness account
A relative of the dead boy who had been with him told AP that the Mexicans — who he described as federal police — pointed their guns only when the Americans waded into the mud in an apparent attempt to cross into Mexico.
The Mexican authorities accused the Americans of trying to recover evidence from Mexican soil and threatened to kill them if they crossed over from the Texas side, prompting both sides to draw their guns, said the 16-year-old boy who asked not to be further identified for fear of reprisal.
The confrontation occurred Monday night over the body of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka, who died of his wounds beside the column of a railroad bridge connecting Ciudad Juarez and El Paso.
Each government has made veiled accusations suggesting misconduct on the part of the other’s law enforcement agents.
Hernandez was found 20 feet inside Mexico, and an autopsy revealed that the fatal shot was fired at a relatively close range, according to Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office. Mexican authorities said a .40 caliber shell casing was found near the body, suggesting that the Border Patrol agent might have crossed into Mexico to shoot the boy.
That would violate the rules for border agents, who are supposed to stay on the U.S. side, and could lead to a Mexican homicide prosecution.
A U.S. official close to the investigation told AP that authorities have a video showing that the Border Patrol agent did not cross into Mexico. In fact, the official said, the video shows what appear to be members of Mexican law enforcement crossing onto the U.S. side, picking something up and returning to Mexico. The official was not cleared to speak about the video and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Border Patrol’s video
Alejandro Pariente, Chihuahua state’s regional deputy attorney general, said the U.S. Border Patrol provided video he is reviewing. He declined to describe it except to say that it has sped up the investigation.
The killings have provoked anger in Mexico like no other recent controversy surrounding immigration, including Arizona’s new law making it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant and President Barack Obama’s decision to send the National Guard to the border.
Issues such as growing drug violence had taken center stage in relations between the countries. That has started to change with the back-to-back deaths of two Mexicans at the border: the teen killed Monday, and migrant Anastasio Hernandez, 42, shocked with a stun gun by a Customs and Border Protection officer at the crossing that separates San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.
Hernandez, who had lived in the U.S. since he was 14, was buried Wednesday in San Diego. Mexican news media were filled with images of the 15-year-old’s bloody body and his grieving relatives. One tabloid ran a large photograph on its cover, with the banner headline “Grindaderas,” salty slang that roughly translates as “things Americans do.”
