Boy’s Family Join in Grief Over Death at the Border

It had been two years since Ana Maria Jimenez had set eyes on three of her children, including her 12-year-old son, Emilio. Her family, like so many other expatriate families from Mexico and elsewhere, has been divided by immigration status and economic necessity. All eagerly anticipated a reunion scheduled for last week.

“Emilio was so anxious to be with his parents again,” Jimenez recalled Monday as she and relatives gathered at her family’s modest apartment in the Orange County community of Stanton. “He said the important thing was that we were together as a family,” the mother said, remembering a recent telephone conversation with the boy.

The anticipated reunion was never to be. On Friday afternoon, Emilio Eusebio Jimenez Bejines--described by his mother as a conscientious youth who once collected bottles and old car batteries for resale in an effort to supplement his family’s meager income--was shot dead as he and a group of other undocumented Mexican citizens were gathered atop a border hillside. They had just crossed into the United States.

Among those who witnessed the killing were the boy’s brother, Ernesto, 13, his sister, Raquel, 11, and their uncle, Emilio Bejines Gomez, 22, who was entrusted with bringing the three from their home in the Mexican state of Jalisco to Southern California and its ample opportunities.

On Friday evening, San Diego police arrested a suspect in the killing. He is Leonard P. Cuen, a 21-year-old resident of San Diego’s Monument Road, one of the first U.S. streets north of the border. Authorities allege that Cuen shot Emilio with a high-powered rifle from his family’s home, located about 350 yards from where the boy was standing.

The Cuens’ home sits next to one of the paths down the hillside that illegal aliens increasingly have used in recent years in entering the United States. But police on Monday refused to comment on whether the continual flow of aliens past the house was a factor in the shooting.

There have been reports from neighbors that Cuen may have been target shooting at times last Friday, leading to speculation the killing might have been accidental. Emilio Bejines Gomez, the dead boy’s uncle, said this theory was relayed to him by police investigating the case.

Again, police refused to comment.

For the Jimenez family, the reason for Emilio’s death seems less critical than coming to accept the painful reality that the long-anticipated reunion had resulted in tragedy. On Monday, Ana Maria Jimenez viewed her son at a Westminster mortuary, marking the first time she had seen him in two years.

“I had to embrace his body,” said a sobbing Jimenez, a strong, willful and deeply religious woman who has picked strawberries and cleaned offices, among other tasks, to support her family since she came to the United States in the early 1980s.

“He appeared peaceful; he appeared to be sleeping,” she said. “I heard my son speaking to me. I asked him to forgive me for not being with him during this time. I promised him I would care for his brothers and sisters.”

Her family is one of the many split by immigration laws and poverty. U.S. and Mexican authorities report an increase in women and children crossing the border in recent years because so many recipients of amnesty under the 1986 immigration law revisions were men whose families were left behind.

Emilio’s mother is undocumented in the United States, as are three of her four surviving children. (Her youngest, Ana Carol, 5, was born in the United States.) Her husband, Ernesto Jimenez, 34, who is recuperating from several work-related accidents, has achieved temporary legal status through the amnesty program, family members said.

Emilio and his siblings lived in the United States for four years before being sent back two years ago when the family was no longer able to support them here, the mother said. Since then, the children have been living with relatives in Mexico while she and her husband sent home money for their care.

On Sunday evening, the family sought solace for their loss by praying together while burning a candle to the Santo Nino de Atocha, a revered Roman Catholic child figure in Mexico.

Emilio’s uncle is fighting guilt feelings in the wake of the boy’s death.

“I was as careful as I could have been with them,” the uncle, fighting back tears, said Monday in the ground-floor family apartment.

He recalled how he bought seats in the middle rows of the bus that traveled from the city of Guadalajara to Tijuana, hoping that any accident would be less likely felt in those rows. He said he watched out for them during the five hours or so that they spent in Tijuana on Friday before hooking up with a smuggler and heading to the paths that lead to San Diego.

After the shooting, Bejines Gomez said he carried the boy frantically on his shoulder for about 150 yards, seeking help, before feeling warm liquid on his clothing and realizing it was blood. He looked and saw that the boy’s eyes were “lost,” the uncle recalled.

“It’s something that I can never forget,” the uncle repeated. “I can’t forget that spot on that hill.”

All family members voiced the hope that other families will be spared similar tragedies.

“I just wish,” said Teresa Jimenez, a sister-in-law of the dead boy’s mother, “I just wish that the United States and Mexico would get together and just open their eyes to what’s going on, and make it easier for families that have been separated for so many years to get together.”