Swartz fired through the border fence into Nogales, Sonora, and fatally wounded 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez on October. 10, 2012. The ACLU has since filed a federal civil lawsuit on behalf of his family, arguing that the agent used excessive force when he opened fire. CBS News reporter Anna Werner without giving a source for her allegation, said there have been several similar cases involving shootings by Border Patrol agents. But his family says the boy was walking home from a basketball game with friends and wasn’t armed or throwing rocks.
Advertisement
Swartz’s attorney, Sean Chapman, told The Huffington Post that his client plans to plead not guilty and fight the charges.
Swartz is on paid administrative leave, a Border Patrol spokesman said. Representatives for U.S. Customs and Border Protection also could not be immediately reached.
A US Border Patrol agent has been indicted on a charge of murder for the first time in a killing that occurred in the line of duty.
Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Relations said in a statement Thursday that the indictment “represents an unprecedented advance in terms of transparency and accountability”, particularly for those that “resort disproportionately to the use of lethal force against unarmed suspects”. “We ask the public to withhold judgment about Agent Swartz while the legal process unfolds”. But both American civil liberties groups and Mexican authorities are drawing attention to the incident, saying it raises worrying questions not only about the Border Patrol’s use of force, but also its recent surge of manpower along the border.
According to the Department of Homeland Security agency, rock throwers have attacked agents more than 1,700 times since 2010.
The family – Elena Rodriguez’s parents, sisters and brother in Mexico and grandparents, who are US citizens, in Arizona – remains optimistic, Parra said.
Advertisement
A federal judge in July ruled that the lawsuit can go forward. In that case, a three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals originally said Hernandez Guereca’s family could sue the city of Mesa, Arizona, but the full court overturned the June 2010 ruling in April 2015. Before he fired his weapon across the Rio Grande, Mesa was trying to arrest immigrants who had illegally crossed into the country when rock-throwers attacked him, authorities said.
