La Linea

First the armored boats with machine guns on the Rio Grande now helicopter snipers. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, seems bent on turning Texas border communities into Iraq.

On Thursday a DPS helicopter sniper-opened fire on a truck on a Texas highway killing two men and injuring a third passenger near La Joya in Hidalgo County, reports the McAllen Monitor. Texas Parks and Wildlife rangers were pursuing the red truck, which they thought contained a drug load and called for back up from a DPS helicopter. It turned out the truck was not carrying drugs but nine Guatemalan nationals and an unidentified driver.

What is especially disturbing about the shooting incident is the testimony from the survivors in the truck. Alba Caceres, the Guatemalan Consul General in McAllen told the Monitor that survivors testified the tarp had flown off the truck exposing the people in the pick up bed so that it was clear to the sniper the truck was transporting people, not drugs.

“I know my people are in the wrong crossing illegally and I know that the government of this country has to protect their border, but to shoot at unarmed humans is beyond me,” Caceres told the Monitor. “I can’t conceive how a police officer fires at unarmed humans. These are people from humble origins that even at first glance do not look like hardened criminals.”

The two deceased men were between ages 20 to 25; one was the father of two, the other the father of three, reports the San Antonio Express-News. Their names were withheld, pending official notification of relatives.

The nine Guatemalans travelling in the truck left the same city together on October 8, Caceres told the Express-News. Each had paid $2,000 to be taken from San Martín Jilotepeque in the state of Chimaltenango, Guatemala through Mexico, and then another $3,000 to be brought to the United States. Most were headed for jobs in New Jersey.

The trooper who shot the men has been put on administrative leave, according to DPS. Lethal force can be used when the officer or someone else is at substantial risk of death or bodily injury, according to agency policy.

A trooper trained to use an AR-10 rifle from the air mans nearly every DPS helicopter, reports the Express-News. DPS Director Steve McCraw told the newspaper the snipers were needed to protect troopers on the ground when patrolling the border.

“That’s what our aerial assets are doing, and we need to protect those aerial assets and in doing so, we put a sniper on those,” he said. “And we’re really not apologetic about it. We’ve got an obligation to protect our men and women when we’re trying to protect Texas.”

I suggest you read both the San Antonio Express-News and Monitor stories to get more details because this shooting incident really is remarkable both for its cruelty and sheer lack of logic.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anyone in our state leadership at the moment who appears sane enough to tell DPS Director McCraw that shooting unarmed people from a helicopter is a bad idea.

Is it just me or have our state leaders turned into the cast for The Expendables? With Attorney General Greg Abbott tweeting to an international election monitoring group last week “BRING IT” and Ag Commissioner Todd Staples advocating for “sanitary tactical zones along the border” and a Governor who shoots coyotes with a laser-sighted pistol who’s really going to put the brakes on McCraw’s transformation into Dr. Strangelove?

Photo by Eugenio del Bosque

Migrant children deported into Reynosa, Mexico

In January 2012, the number of unaccompanied Central American children crossing into the United States suddenlydoubled. As months passed, the number of children apprehended at the border just kept growing. U.S. government officials scrambled to find shelters for the influx of children and nonprofits struggled to figure out why so many kids were willing to risk the long, dangerous journey to the United States.

These children who have been apprehended at the U.S. border, ranging in ages from 4 to 18, primarily come from three countries: Guatemala (35 percent), El Salvador (27 percent) and Honduras (25 percent).  All three countries are currently experiencing some of the highest murder rates in the world. Much of the violence is being spurred by drug trafficking, weak state institutions, corruption and gang violence. The New York-based Women’s Refugee Commission spent several months interviewing the children detained in the United States and on Monday released its report, “The Lost Boys and Girls of Central America.”

What the group found was that poverty is no longer the primary reason children are migrating to the United States—what’s driving them from their homes is fear. “They fear for their lives,” said commission attorney Jessica Jones in a telephone press conference Monday. “What we heard from many of the children is, ‘I know I may die on the journey, but I knew I would die if I stayed home,’” she said.

Researchers at the nonprofit commission interviewed more than 150 children detained in the United States and met with U.S. government agencies tasked with handling the influx of children. The commission came to the troubling conclusion that this level of migration will be the new norm due to the growing rates of violence in Central America.

Children cited public schools overrun by violent gangs and neighborhoods divided by gang affiliation where people can’t move freely without being threatened with violence. Girls cited an increase in gang rapes and street violence and said that authorities were unable to protect them. Jones said the commission interviewed one 11-year-old girl who had been paying protection money since she was 9 to prevent gang members from raping her and her grandmother. “At age 11, she raised the money herself and found a guide to take her to the United States,” said Jones. “For these children the United States represents hope and a place of security.”

This is why it was especially shocking to find that some of the children were abused and mistreated by U.S. Border Patrol agents after being apprehended, according to the report’s findings. Several children reported being kicked, tasered and being called names like “filthy pig” and “worthless,” according to Michelle Brane, director of the committee’s detention and asylum program.

Brane said they interviewed a 17-year old boy who reported that Border Patrol agents near McAllen grabbed him by the neck and pushed him to the ground, then tasered him. “He was most upset because they did the same thing to a pregnant woman also apprehended in his group,” Brane says. “He couldn’t understand why they would Taser a pregnant woman.”

The commission also spoke with two girls ages 12 and 14, who were beaten by Border Patrol agents. One girl’s injuries were severe enough to require she be taken to the hospital. The girl was too afraid to tell the doctor about how her injuries had been caused because the same guard was standing right next to her in the exam room, says Brane.

The report makes several recommendations for U.S. government institutions caring for the migrant children from smaller group home facilities to more child friendly holding places that look less like detention facilities. And it recommends that Border Patrol prioritize screening for asylum cases and care for migrant children. “This migration is going to be the new norm,” said Brane. “And here in the United States we need to make sure that basic human rights are met.”

PHOTO BY MAY-EK QUERALES

Juan Frairie Escobedo at the El Paso press conference Tuesday.

On Sunday in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua Gov. Cesar Duarte triumphantly announced before the TV cameras that police had finally caught the man who killed well-known activist Marisela Escobedo on the Chihuahua State Capitol steps in December 2010.

At the time of her death, Marisela was holding a vigil to bring her 16-year-old daughter’s killer to justice, one of the dozens of marches and events that made her famous in Mexico for her courage and persistence in seeking justice in the murder of her daughter Rubi Fraire Escobedo.

At a press conference held by the state police Sunday, Jose Enrique Jimenez Zavala, known as “El Wicked,” was presented as the man who shot Marisela Escobedo. According to police, Jimenez is an alleged gunman for the Los Aztecas gang, which are enforcers for the Juarez cartel. In a televised confession, the 29-year-old Jimenez said he carried out Escobedo’s murder on orders from the Zetas and La Linea (gunmen for the Juarez cartel). Jimenez said they wanted her killed because she was drawing too much attention through her protests.

The only problem is that Jimenez isn’t the killer, says Escobedo’s son, Juan Fraire Escobedo. In a press conference Tuesday at the El Paso law office of Carlos Spector, Juan said that his uncle—who was an eyewitness to the murder of Marisela—ID’d the killer but Mexican authorities have done nothing to capture him. Escobedo, who is seeking political asylum in the United States, says the man who killed his mother is an U.S. citizen but works for organized crime in Mexico.

“I’m very sad and angry that they still haven’t resolved my mother’s case,” he said in a telephone interview after the press conference. “We met with the Mexican authorities at the Mexican consulate in El Paso last year and ID’d the criminal. They promised there would be an investigation. But after that they never responded to me again. Jimenez is not the man who killed my mother.”

Mexican authorities have also failed to solve the murder of his sister Rubi, he says, which occurred in 2008.  Sergio Barraza, Rubi’s former boyfriend, confessed to the killing and even led authorities to where he had burnt her body, but the judges declared him innocent for lack of evidence. Marisela began a campiagn for judicial reform and was working to have Barraza arrested when she was killed. According to Juan Fraire Escobedo, Barraza is now a member of the Zetas Cartel.

Fraire Escobedo says the only thing he agrees with from the government’s claims this week is that the orders to kill his mother were given by the Zetas and La Linea. “Jimenez is nothing more than a scapegoat for the authorities,” he says.

To learn more about Juan Fraire Escobedo’s fight for justice for his family hear him speak at a Texas Observer forum last March with the nonprofit group Mexicans in Exile, who are advocating for justice and human rights in Mexico.

PHOTO BY PATRICK MICHELS

Todd Staples

Texas is an urban state, and commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture has become one of the more obscure statewide offices. Most Texans don’t regularly think about boll weevil eradication or irrigation issues, especially when they’re sitting in traffic on I-10. Ag commissioner just isn’t the political stepping-stone it once was. So what’s an ambitious politician who wants to run for higher office to do?

For Todd Staples, the answer is to run the Department of Agriculture like he’s Chuck Norris.

Staples, a Republican who’s openly running for lieutenant governor in 2014, has made the threat of narco-terrorism on the Mexico border his central issue. If you’re wondering what narco-terrorism has to do with agriculture, well, Staples claims that drug cartels are threatening Texas farmers and, in turn, our food supply.

In late August, the ag commissioner was the keynote speaker at a narco-terrorism conference at Angelo State University, where he plugged the debut of his 16-part video series titled “Texas Traffic—True Stories of Drug and Human Smuggling.” The department is posting these videos on the ag department’s ProtectYourTexasBorder.com site. Each week, the website features a new interview with a border resident or law-enforcement official.

At the narco-terrorism conference, Staples argued that the federal government hasn’t done enough to secure the border. Among his solutions: triple the number of “boots on the ground,” send surplus military equipment from Iraq and Afghanistan to the border, and categorize cartel violence as “terroristic activity by violent transnational organizations.”

“It’s time for the federal government to answer the call of duty and provide sufficient protection for our citizens and resources,” Staples said in written statement to the Observer about why he created the video series and the website. “Bullet holes don’t lie. The ProtectYourTexasBorder website provides firsthand accounts of the dangers along our border. Farmers and ranchers along the Rio Grande are caught in the middle of a conflict that affects every citizen of our nation. A threat to our food supply is a threat to our homeland security. Texas stands ready to fight these terrorists and protect our residents, but we must have increased federal support to secure our borders, defeat our enemies and safeguard our national food supply.”

Lambasting the federal government for not securing the border has become a tried-and-true talking point for any Republican candidate with aspirations for higher office. Last year, Staples commissioned an $80,000 study by two retired U.S. Army generals that called for turning Texas border counties into “sanitary tactical zones” where military operations can push back the narco-terrorists.

Some border residents aren’t pleased with Staples’ zeal to militarize their hometowns. One of his biggest critics, it turns out, is Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, who told The Monitor newspaper in McAllen that his border county last year had its second-lowest crime rate in 15 years. “To say the farmers and ranchers have been victimized personally—other than the trespassing—have been assaulted, threatened?” Treviño said. “I don’t have the statistics to support those allegations.”

“People who run into border-related trouble should report the problem to law enforcement,” Treviño told The Monitor, “instead of telling Staples, who isn’t a law-enforcement official and can’t directly tackle the problem. And that’s why I find [it] so frustrating. And I don’t know, maybe Commissioner Staples is looking to beef up his political résumé. Why else would you do something like that?”