Thursday, June 17, 2010

CBP Shooting Highlights Assaults on Agents

A lot of facts about US/Mexico border violence have been omitted from the conspicuously opportunistic outrage over a Border Patrol agent’s unfortunate fatal shooting last week of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca, a 15-year-old Ciudad Juarez teenager who assaulted the agent while trying to illegally get into the US. There has also has been silence about the repeated penetration of US territory by Mexican military forces, who in several instances fired on US Border Patrol agents. According to T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council and a former Senior Border Patrol Agent, US immigration enforcement records show the boy had been arrested six times on various charges related to human smuggling or illegal entry into the US. Bonner further claimed the boy provided a sworn statement to investigators last year about an organized smuggling enterprise with which he’d been involved. Neither Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) nor Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed Bonner’s account of the boy’s alleged criminal background. But what there is no doubt about is that for many years the US/Mexico border near Juarez has been a highly combustible environment, and that it ignited when Huereca was shot on June 7 by an El Paso Station Border Patrol agent...

So Homeland Security Today couldn't get a confirmation from CBP.

Seems like SOP for the Border Patrol.

I emailed a simple question to Doug Mosier, PIO for the El Paso sector over a month ago. To date I've received no response. Not even an aknowledgement of receipt or a referral to someone who could answer the question.

A few days later I emailed Lloyd Easterling, Director of Media Relations at headquarters with a series of questions. Same deal - no response.

These guys have either been muzzled, or they don't give a damn.

In either case, they are rapidly losing friends.

No comments: