Letter to The Editor: Fight for Body Cams on Border will Continue (San Diego Union Tribune)
By Christian Ramirez
The recently published article, “Activists push for body cams for border agents” demonstrates the lack of justice given to Anastasio Hernandez Rojas’ family.
This family has been subjected to delayed tactics and refusals to prosecute. This injustice has created a gap of mistrust.
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Trial for Border Patrol agent who shot and killed Mexican teenager moved to November
By: Rob O'Dell
TUCSON— The murder trial for the Border Patrol agent who shot through the border fence and killed a Mexican teenager is now set for November, after being delayed three times since late 2015.
U.S. District Court Judge Raner C. Collins set the trial date for Nov. 7, the day before Election Day. The goal was to set a realistic date for both sides — allowing the Border Patrol agent's lawyer Sean Chapman time to prepare for the trial while also giving the government a set date to bring in witnesses from two countries.
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Case of San Diego Man Beaten to Death by CBP to be Reviewed
Responding to calls for accountability, CBP implements Use of Force Review Board
Washington D.C./Southern Border Region - This Thursday, March 10, the Use of Force Review Board (UFRB), convened by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), will review the investigation of CBP's lethal beating of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas.
Maria Puga, widow of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, and Christian Ramirez, Director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, will be available for comment in person, by phone or Skype today, March 9 between 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PST at the office of Alliance San Diego: 4443 30th St. San Diego, CA.
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CBP's Use of Force Review Board to Examine Investigation of Border Stun Gun Death of Mexican Man
By Samantha Tatro, Eric Tucker and Julie Watson
The family of a Mexican man shocked and killed by U.S. border authorities six years ago with a stun gun has a renewed hope for justice now that a review board is looking into the way authorities handled the case.
The 2010 death of 42-year-old Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas raised complaints of excessive force from the then-president of Mexico and others, and investigators with the Justice Department examined the case for evidence of a civil rights violation.
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Tracing America’s borderlands history along the Anza Trail
By: Sarah Tory
I am lost before I’ve even started. It’s December and I’m in Nogales, Arizona, determined to re-trace the footsteps of the first Spanish colonizing expedition across what is now the border between the United States and Mexico. Nearly 250 years ago, in 1775, a young Spanish commander led a group of mostly poor villagers — men, women and children — together with more than 1,000 horses and cattle from the Mexican state of Sinaloa northwards across a vast desert to the far reaches of the Empire in what was then called Alta California. Like Yosemite or Yellowstone, or the Oregon Trail, the expedition’s route is part of the national park system. It should be easy to find. But the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail has no official starting point — at least not one that’s marked.
Instead, there is a giant steel fence equipped with motion sensors, and the ever-vigilant eyes of the U.S. Border Patrol.
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Scathing report deems fatal Border Patrol shooting ‘highly predictable’
By Andrew Becker
U.S. Border Patrol agents had “an astonishing pattern” of shooting people who threw rocks at them under a vague use-of-force policy that led to the “highly predictable” death of a man along the U.S.-Mexico border in California, according to a law enforcement expert witness’ review of a fatal shooting.
In a report completed this week, a former Baltimore police commissioner and Justice Department official found a Border Patrol policy allowing agents to shoot their firearms based on the threat of a thrown object “highly suspect.”
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Is the U.S. “Failing” Migrant Children Fleeing Violence?
By: Sarah Childress
Day after day, a white van pulled up at an egg farm in central Ohio and unloaded several young Guatemalans, most of them just teenagers.
They were forced to work 12-hour shifts six or seven days a week loading and unloading crates of chickens, cleaning their coops and clipping their beaks. At night, they bedded down in unheated, rat-infested trailers without working toilets, kept down under threat of violence by traffickers.
The young migrants had been apprehended in the United States, then handed over to the traffickers, who posed as close friends and family members willing to take them in while they awaited their immigration hearings.
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Ok, one more time - No, we're not being overrun by illegal immigrants: Analysis
By: John L. Micek
Okay, sit down. Take a deep breath.
Now repeat this mantra to yourself: No matter what Donald Trump says, we're not being overrun by illegal immigrants.
We don't need a "beautiful wall."
And we don't need to make Mexico pay for it.
Not that Mexico was going to anyway.
Why?
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Pulitzer Prize Winner Jose Antonio Vargas Talks Race, Immigration, Politics
By Marissa Cabrera, Maureen Cavanaugh
Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist-turned-documentary filmmaker and immigration activist. Now he wants to add another title to his resume: publisher.
Vargas, who revealed in 2011 that he's been living in the U.S. illegally since the age of 12, launched a crowdfunding campaign for a new media venture called #EmergingUS. He says the online news organization aims to explore the "evolving American identity."
Vargas spoke KPBS Midday Edition about immigration, race and the presidential race. Here are highlights from that interview.
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10 Shots Across the Border
By: Mark Binelli
The killing of a Mexican 16-year-old raises troubling questions about the United States Border Patrol.
Around 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 10, 2012, a police officer in Nogales, Ariz., named John Zuñiga received a call reporting suspicious activity on International Street, which runs directly alongside the Mexican border. Most of Zuñiga’s calls involved shoplifters at the local Walmart or domestic-violence complaints, but he also worked as a liaison with United States Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.). Though border security is the responsibility of the Border Patrol, the Nogales police can assist when illegal activity is happening stateside — if, for instance, drug smugglers have slipped over the fence and are making their way into Arizona.
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