2 Border Shooting Inquiries Drag On Over 7 Months

More than seven months after the events, federal authorities have yet to decide whether to prosecute two Border Patrol agents involved in separate, much-publicized shootings of two Mexican teen-agers along the international border.

“No determination has been made,” Amy Casner, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office in Washington, said Wednesday.

The shootings--which left one victim dead and the other seriously wounded--prompted denunciations from human-rights advocates on both sides of the border, escalating an already-heated binational debate about violence on along the border.

In both cases, witnesses have challenged Border Patrol accounts that the agents fired in self-defense.

Authorities are trying to determine if either incident involved a violation of civil rights and merits the filing of criminal charges, Casner said. The FBI has been conducting inquiries into both incidents.

The time-consuming investigations into alleged misbehavior by the agents is a source of frustration for both immigration authorities and rights advocates.

“It’s not to our interest that it takes such extensive time,” said Duke Austin, spokesman in Washington for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who said INS officials would prefer a more expeditious course.

Rights advocates, who have long contended that patrol officers act with “impunity” and are rarely sanctioned for alleged abuses, question whether the protracted investigations are part of a deliberate effort to obscure accountability.

“It makes you wonder about whether the criminal justice system will ever follow through,” said Roberto Martinez, border representative in San Diego for the American Friends Service Committee, the social action arm of the Quaker church.

But U.S. officials say the investigations are often complex and necessarily prolonged. In one of the two cases still under Justice Department review, FBI agents interviewed witnesses in Mexicali, Mexico, within the last few weeks, according to an attorney representing the victim.

“If we were in any way involved in trying to accelerate the process, we’d be accused of biasing it,” noted Austin of the INS.

Agents found to be culpable face possible criminal and administrative sanctions, Border Patrol officials say.

In recent months, Gustavo De la Vina, chief patrol agent in San Diego, has fired one agent who allegedly abused a suspect illegal immigrant in custody, authorities said. De la Vina also upheld the monthlong suspension, without pay, of another agent who discharged his service handgun into a crowded van, seriously injuring two immigrants. No criminal charges have emerged from either of those cases.

The two Border Patrol agents involved in the cases pending before Justice Department’s civil rights division have been posted to administrative duties since the shootings, officials said. Both are described as agents with at least three years experience.

In such cases, officials said, supervisors have the right to suspend agents immediately, pending the outcome of law enforcement inquiries. But authorities say initial reviews in these two instances indicated that the agents complied with with guidelines that call for the use of deadly force only in the face of mortal danger.

Border Patrol authorities have withheld both agents’ names, in accordance with a longstanding policy that officials say is designed to shield the officers from retribution. Critics say the policy--in contrast with the guidelines used by most local police forces, which generally readily release the names of officers involved in shootings--is designed to spare lawmen embarrassment and to impede independent inquiries.

The cases involve the fatal shooting Sept. 8 of Victor Adrian Mandujano Navarro, 17, in San Diego, and the wounding nine weeks later of Eduardo Garcia Zamores, 15, in the Imperial County town of Calexico. The Garcia and Mandujano families have filed separate civil claims seeking multimillion-dollar damages from the INS, preludes to federal lawsuits.

Garcia’s shooting caused the greatest uproar.

Garcia, one of the legions of young vendors hawking goods along the border, was shot in the torso early Nov. 18 as he straddled the metal fence separating Calexico from the much larger city of Mexicali, Mexico. He fell onto the Mexican side.

The Border Patrol agent told authorities that he fired as the teen-ager was poised to throw a rock at him. Garcia has denied that he had a stone; he said the agent fired without warning or provocation as he was climbing back into Mexico.

The case spawned several large-scale protests in the Calexico-Mexicali area, including a demonstration that resulted in a nine-hour shutdown of the busy border crossing.

Garcia, who still has bullet fragments in his body, has occasional problems breathing and suffers pains associated with the wound, said Irwin Zalkin, the San Diego attorney who represents him. The youth, one of eight siblings who was hawking chewing gum and newspapers along the border in an effort to help support his family, now works as a busboy in a Mexicali restaurant, Zalkin said.

The officer involved, who is assigned to the Border Patrol unit based in El Centro, was initially transferred to desk duties at regional INS headquarters at Laguna Nigel, said Johnny N. Williams, chief patrol agent in El Centro. The agent has since returned to an administrative post in El Centro, Williams said.

In the other case, Mandujano was shot near midnight on Sept. 8 just north of the border fence in San Diego.

The Border Patrol has maintained that the agent, who was on a plainclothes assignment wearing blue jeans and a field jacket, fired during a struggle with the suspect. Officials say Mandujano attacked the officer and attempted to wrestle away his gun.

But three witnesses, including the dead man’s brother, Higinio Mandujano, have told Mexican authorities in sworn statements that the agent fired at point-blank range after pulling the victim from the fence and pinning him on the ground.

Justice Department civil rights attorneys in Washington are also reviewing a third Border Patrol shooting from last year, the slaying of a 33-year-old Mexican man near the border in San Diego on Nov. 1. However, no witnesses are known to have come forward in that case to dispute the Border Patrol’s contention that the agent fired when attacked by the suspect, who reportedly brandished a knife. The agent involved in that case has been returned to active duty, a Border Patrol spokesman said.