The U.S. Immigration Crisis: Toward an Ethics of Place

By Miguel A. De La Torre

The current immigration crisis on our southern borders is usually debated from a safe distance. Politicians create a fear of the migrant to garner votes, while academicians pontificate on the topic from the comfort of cushy armchairs. What would happen if instead the issue were explored with one's feet on the ground--what the author calls an "ethics of place"? As an organic intellectual, De La Torre writes while physically standing in solidarity with migrants who are crossing borders and the humanitarian organizations that accompany them in their journey. He painstakingly captures their stories, testimonies, and actions, which become the foundation for theological and ethical analysis. From this vantage point, the book constructs a liberative ethics based on what those disenfranchised by our current immigration policies are saying and doing in the hopes of not just raising consciousness, but also crafting possibilities for participatory praxis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jun 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781498223706

Miguel A. De La Torre

Miguel A. De La Torre is Professor of Social Ethics and Latino/a Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and the author or editor of more than twenty-five books. He is the 2012 President of the Society of Christian Ethics.

Book preview

1

On A Street Corner In Nogales, Mexico

Along a superimposed 1,833-mile line, the richest and most powerful nation ever known to humanity is separated from what is derogatorily referred to as the Third World. The United States is not separated from its neighbors to the south by some natural boundary; instead, this border was artificially created, a direct consequence of the U.S. territorial conquest of northern Mexico (1846–48). To live on the physical international border is to live in a war zone, where the greatest military power ever known in history amasses against the supposed threat of poor brown people. Borderlands are not solely geographic locations; they are also social locations. Those living south of the border live separated from the benefits and fruits of their labor exported northward. This economic social structure of exclusion prevails because Mexicans and Central Americans—and by extension U.S. Latinxs¹—are conceived by the dominant Euroamerican culture as being inferior. They are perceived as inferior partly due to the pervasive race-conscious U.S. culture. For centuries Euroamericans have been taught to equate nonwhites, specifically mixed-race persons, as less-than. To be a half-breed, a mixture of races and ethnicities (Caucasian, African, Indigenous, or any combination thereof) meant limited access to opportunities and social services. Not much has changed. To physically be in the social location of the borderlands’ war zone is to recognize the fragility of brown life. And although brown lives also matter, they remain cheap and dispensable by those on the border with high-tech surveillance and weapons. Since the days of the Texas Rangers almost a century ago, when brown bodies were lynched for sport, to today where brown bodies are indiscriminatively shot, brown lives remain expendable.

On a balmy December day, I stand on a Nogales street corner in Mexico. Directly across the street is a white medical clinic with rusted bars on the windows and worn out protruding yellow signage that reads "Emergencias Medicas." Directly to my left is Calle Internacional, a two-lane street that runs along the perimeter of the wall, built to demarcate the international border existing between the United States and Mexico. This wall has not always existed. There was a time when the residents on both sides of this border town would travel across the international border to shop and work with minor hindrances. The genesis of the wall was 1994 (shortly after the ratification of NAFTA) when landing strips used during the First Iraqi War were recycled by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to construct a wall in hopes of stemming the flow of mainly Mexican immigrants through Nogales and San Diego.

As I cross the street toward the corner clinic I immediately notice bullet holes on the façade. I count twelve, each encircled by a fading red mark. Along the clinic’s northern wall facing the colossal international wall are plastered handbills of a teenager’s face with the word "¡JUSTICIA!" embolden under the portrait. There is also a mural of the same boy with a halo jumping rope. A three-foot ornate white cross with an intertwining red rose leans against the clinic’s wall with a picture of the same boy in its center. His name was José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, a teenager who aspired to one day join the Mexican military. Clearly he perished at this site in a hail of bullets. But why? Was he a gang-banger, or an innocent pedestrian caught up in some drug related drive-by shooting?

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Photographer: Vincent De La Torre

The sixteen-year-old boy died with two shots to the head and eight shots to the back, just three blocks away from his home. Based on the autopsy report, he was facing away from his assailant. On the evening of October 10, 2012, José told his grandmother, Taide Elena, that he was going to visit his brother Diego, an Oxxo convenience store clerk, at work to help him lock up. The route to the Oxxo took him along Calle Internacional. José, whose father died three years earlier, was a studious boy; but due to financial difficulties, he was suspended from school when the family was unable to pay the tuition. He was, nonetheless, excited to be starting classes again in the next week. As José left home and began his walk toward Calle Internacional, on the other side of the wall, in a different world, border agents received a 911 call that men were hoisting bundles of marijuana over the wall, a common occurrence.

John Zuniga, a K-9 officer, was the first to arrive at the scene. He saw two men attempting to climb the wall back into Mexico. The agent claimed to have shouted at them to stop; even though at least three witnesses on the Mexican side confirmed they heard no shouts. Zuniga says that as soon as he shouted at the perpetrators, he heard rocks hitting the ground and saw several stones flying through the air. Zuniga returned to his vehicle to lock up his dog and take cover when he heard gunshots. Looking up, he saw fellow agent Lonnie Swartz firing into Mexico. According to Sonora state police ballistic reports, at least one agent fired fourteen hollow-point bullets from a standard issue .40-caliber Heckler & Koch pistol. This means that the agent must have emptied his revolver, reloaded, and kept on shooting. According to Isidro Alvarado, a security guard who was walking about twenty feet behind José, he saw two youths run past the lad, away from the wall. That’s when he heard gunshots and saw José fall.²

I crossed Calle Internacional and past the vehicles parked on a 45-degree angle against a rock formation that is about twenty-five feet high. On top of this bluff is the wall, roughly eighteen feet tall. The once solid wall build from recycled landing strips was replaced in 2006 with circular steel bars, giving the impression of a jail locking brown bodies out, and in. Because of the distance from the clinic to the wall (about thirty feet), the height of the wall above the rock formation (about forty-three feet), and the arc that the rock would need to travel to make it over the wall, it is almost physically impossible for any rock to be thrown from the clinic and make its way to the U.S. side. Maybe a Major League baseball player could accomplish this herculean feat; but even then, it is doubtful that the missive thrown would do any harm.

Additionally, the agent would have had to be up against the wall to fire his weapon through the 3.5-inch gap between the steel bars. A rock would have had to violate the laws of physics, once it went over the wall, and instead of continuing in a downward arc, it would need to change direction and fall parallel with the wall to create any threat for the shooting officer. In theory, José could have thrown the rock through the 3.5 inch gaps, a challenging achievement at night. Also, because José was shot in the back, he would have had to throw the alleged rock over his shoulder. I notice the wall security camera just fifty yards from where José was killed facing the shot-up clinic façade. The images captured that evening could easily clear up the inconsistencies and incongruencies surrounding the event; but thus far, the Border Patrol has refused to release said video. The video can demonstrate if the Mexican witnesses are correct in asserting that José was not throwing rocks.

José Antonio Elena Rodríguez is not the only one to perish by Border Patrol agents while on Mexican soil. Sergio Adrian Hernandez-Guereca (age fifteen) was shot in Ciudad Juarez while accompanying his older brother Omar to work. While Omar did maintenance repairs on the Paso del Norte border bridge, Sergio, along with other boys played on the dry bed of the Rio Grande. He was shot by Border Patrol agent Jesús Mesa Jr. when he peeked from behind a column where he sought cover. The agent fired at Sergio while twelve yards from the border on the U.S. side. Mesa claimed he was surrounded by rock throwing youth, and fearing for his life acted in self-defense. But when several cell phone videos surfaced capturing the incident, Mesa’s version of what occurred proved to be inaccurate.³ Sergio was not throwing rocks; he was hiding, making the fatal mistake of peeking to see if the agent was still present. In spite of the cell phone videos, the Department of Justice ruled that insufficient evidence existed to prosecute Mesa on any criminal or civil charges. Since 2010 (until March 2015) border agents have killed thirty-three individuals, at least twelve of them American citizens. Besides José and Sergio, others where shot from the U.S. side of the wall while they were in Mexico: Ramses Barron Torres (age seventeen) who was accused of throwing rocks, although denied by witnesses; Carlos Lamadrid (age nineteen) a U.S. citizen shot three times in the back for throwing rocks after fleeing into Mexico; Jose Alfredo Yañez Reyes (age forty) killed as he prepared to cross the border, accused of throwing rocks; Juan Pablo Perez Santillán (age thirty), killed while standing on the banks of the Rio Grande, accused of throwing rocks, although witnesses claim he was unarmed; and Guillermo Arévalo Pedroza (age thirty-six), who was not trying to enter the U.S., but nonetheless was killed in front of his wife and small daughters while barbecuing, allegedly he was throwing rocks even though a video of the shooting fails to show any rock being thrown.⁴

Rocking usually occurs for the purpose of distracting agents from apprehending drug mules or immigrants trying to make it across the wall. According to a March 7, 2014 memo to all personnel written by Michael J. Fisher, Chief U.S. Border Patrol, agents have been assaulted with rocks 1,713 times since 2010 (although how these numbers were arrived at, remains a mystery). In these situations, agents responded forty-three times with deadly force resulting in the death of ten individuals.⁵ Most agents respond to rock throwers with a long-range FN-303 rifle style weapon that shoots ten pepper spray balls a second, designed to saturate an area with irritating vapors causing rock throwers to simply disperse. While it is true that twenty-two Border agents have died in the line of duty since 2004, all, with the exception of four, died in vehicle or training accidents. Of the four who died in direct conflict with an aggressor, one agent, Nicholas Ivie, died due to friendly fire at the hands of another agent eight days and about seventy miles west from where José died. Even though the memo goes on to state that Border agents are at greater risk than other law enforcement agencies; the reality is that it is much safer being a Border Patrol agent than an Arizona police officer who is five times more likely to face an assault and four times more likely to be assaulted with a deadly