Border Patrol Agent Shoots and Kills Unarmed Migrant Woman

A U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed an unarmed undocumented woman in Texas Wednesday, the agency said in a statement.

Identified as 20-year-old Claudia Gómez González, the woman was with a group of undocumented immigrants in the border town Rio Bravo when an agent approached them while looking for “illegal activity.” The officer came under attack with “blunt objects,” according to the CBP statement, and fired at least one shot that hit González in the head.

The agent gave the woman CPR but she later died, the statement said. The FBI and Texas Rangers are now both investigating her killing.

The aftermath of the shooting was captured on video and posted to Facebook by Marta Martinez, who told the New York Times that the immigrants did not attack the Border Patrol agent. “There was no weapon. They were hiding,” she said.

“Why do you mistreat them?” Martinez can be heard shouting in Spanish in the video, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Why did you shoot the woman? You killed the woman!”

“They shot her in the head for running,” she said. “They killed her.”

Aura Bogado, a reporter for Reveal, tweeted that González was from Guatemala and had just crossed the border.

González’s killing has the Texas branch of the ACLU renewing calls for Border Patrol agents to be outfitted with body cameras. “While we do not yet have all the facts in this case, Border Patrol’s history of violence against immigrants requires us to scrutinize every incident involving lethal force closely,” Astrid Dominguez, director of the group’s Border Rights Center, said in a statement.

Read the entire article here:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/border-patrol-agent-shots-and-kills-unarmed-migrant-woman.html

Adam K. Raymond