The agent, identified as Lonnie Swartz, is also facing a federal civil rights lawsuit in the death of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez. Border Patrol policy is to treat it as a threat to agents’ lives, allowing them to respond with lethal force.
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The National Border Patrol Council called the decision to indict Swartz “unfortunate” and offered “steady support for Agent Swartz as he fights these accusations”, including providing legal counsel. The Monitor reported that United States border patrol agents have fired across the border at least 12 times in the past five years, killing six Mexicans standing on Mexican soil, according to a 2013 joint investigation by Washington Monthly and The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, a nonprofit media center.
Officials have said Elena Rodriguez was throwing rocks over the border fence at the agents. He told The Arizona Daily Star that he expects his client to plead not guilty at an October 9 arraignment. The Border Patrol has used deadly force more than 40 times in rock-throwing incidents, resulting in 10 deaths. The agency declined to comment on the indictment, instead directing questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Chapman tried to get the lawsuit thrown out on the grounds that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t apply to Elena Rodriguez, a Mexican citizen, because he was in Mexico at the time of the shooting.
A poster in the likeness of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez in Nogales, Mexico.
Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the ACLU who filed the civil lawsuit alleging Rodriguez’s Fourth and Fifth Amendments rights were violated, said this is the first indictment of a Border Patrol agent for a cross-border shooting that he’s aware of.
Rodriguez was shot on October 10, 2012 as he walked on a street that runs parallel to the USA border fence in Nogales, Mexico. “There are lots of claims of abuse where Border Patrol has not taken action”.
In July, a federal judge ruled that Rodriguez’s family could sue the agent.
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Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa Jr. shot 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca in 2010 near a bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. “Being struck in the head or other area by a rock thrown at about 50 or 60 miles per hour could seriously injure a cop or even kill him or her if it strikes a sensitive part of the head or body”, Roccia said. Mesa fired his weapon across the Rio Grande, striking the teen twice.
