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Lawsuit Filed In Border Patrol Shooting Of Mexican Teen

Fronteras Images
Photo by Michel Marizco

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Lawsuit Filed In Border Patrol Shooting Of Mexican Teen

Lawsuit Filed In Border Patrol Shooting Of Mexican Teen

Photo by Michel Marizco

Seven bullet holes are circled in red on one of the walls where a Border Patrol agent's bullets struck the night Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez died. The agency says Rodriguez was among a group throwing rocks at a Border Patrol agent. Another bullet hole lies outside of this image. The international border fence is to the left.

TUCSON, Ariz. — Attorneys filed a civil rights lawsuit Tuesday in the case of a Mexican teenager who was shot and killed by United States Border Patrol on the Southwest border. 

The lawsuit is being filed on behalf of Araceli Rodriguez by a coalition of lawyers including the ACLU. Rodriguez’s son Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot ten times near his house along the border in Nogales, Mexico.

Border Patrol said one agent fired shots in response to rocks being thrown by people from the Mexico side of the border. The FBI said they cannot comment on its onging investigation into the shooting. 

Rodriguez said she needs to know more about what happened the night her son was killed.

“It was clearly a murder and they know; the U.S. government knows it was a murder,” she said.

In a similar case, a U.S. court ruled last month that a federal agent — but not the agency or the government — could be sued by the family of a Mexican national shot along the border.

ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said he anticipates the government will argue that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect foreign nationals on foreign soil. He said the implications of this argument can't be overstated.

"If a U.S. agent can kill civilians simply by shooting across the border, and the Constitution doesn’t apply, we’re really left with one thing, and that’s the government policing itself and that is completely antithetical to the way our system works. We cannot have a system where an agency polices itself and that’s the only check," Gelernt said.

Gelernt said this is an enormous legal question that could be argued for many years. 

Kate Sheehy was a reporter for the Fronteras Desk.