JUSTICE : Killing Spurs Extradition Tug of War With Mexico

In the predawn darkness beside the Rio Grande on Jan. 19, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jefferson Barr and his partner spotted at least four men crossing the river from Mexico near Eagle Pass, Texas. The agents gave chase, assuming the men were illegal migrants. Then shots rang out.

In the volley of gunfire, a bullet hit Barr in the collarbone. It deflected through his heart. Before he died in his partner’s arms, Barr unloaded his .357-magnum revolver, apparently wounding at least one of his attackers before they fled back into Mexico.

The assault was but one of more than 140 on Border Patrol agents during the past year.

But Barr’s slaying on his eighth anniversary on the force stands apart. It has become a flash point in one of the most sensitive issues in U.S.-Mexican relations: extradition of Mexican citizens accused of committing crimes in the United States.

Barr’s assailants, it is believed, were not migrants. According to criminal charges filed later, they were drug traffickers.

Border agents captured one suspect and recovered duffel bags stuffed with 200 pounds of marijuana after the gun battle.

A subsequent FBI investigation traced the wounded accused attacker to a hospital in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras, where U.S. officials say the suspect--Jose Chavez--told FBI investigators that he was among the group that turned on Barr.

The U.S. filed a request for Chavez’s extradition--one of 56 such cases pending involving Mexican citizens wanted on criminal charges in the United States, according to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

But under current Mexican policy, the chance of his extradition is virtually nil.

Feinstein used that statistic last week, during Senate hearings on legislation she is co-sponsoring that would ban all future U.S. loans to Mexico until it is more cooperative in the war on drugs. Among the focal points of those hearings was the extradition issue--and Barr’s death.

A number of U.S. and Mexican officials agree that none of those pending extradition requests is likely to be granted under current Mexican policy, which has been to block all such requests. The policy is permitted under the 1978 U.S.-Mexican extradition treaty, and it reflects Mexico’s deep sense of nationalism: Citizens accused of wrongdoing, the reasoning goes, should be tried in Mexican courts--even for crimes committed elsewhere.

But the policy soon may change, according to President Clinton’s new drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who has stressed both its sensitivity and its importance.

Heading an official delegation to Mexico last week, the retired four-star general told reporters here that he sensed a new willingness among Mexican officials to, for the first time, consider approving some pending extradition requests.

The subjects of those requests include Mexican citizens charged with child molestation, narcotics trafficking and murder. And that apparently new attitude, McCaffrey said, helped convince him that U.S.-Mexican cooperation has reached a level greater than ever before.

Mexican officials declined comment on McCaffrey’s prediction that the policy could change within months.

In the case of Agent Barr, a spokesman for Mexico’s attorney general’s office said Chavez is now in custody in Piedras Negras, charged under Mexican law with drug trafficking in the Eagle Pass incident. He added that Chavez also will be charged and tried in Mexico for Barr’s killing when the FBI files its evidence here.

Researcher Shasta Darlington in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.