Border Guards Beat Immigrant to Death; Feds Settle With Family For $1M

Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., Washington Post, Mar. 28, 2017 - "Anastacio Hernandez’s final screams had drawn a crowd. The undocumented immigrant yelped “ayudame” and “no hice nada” — “help” and “I didn’t do anything” in Spanish — as more than a dozen U.S. Border Patrol agents clobbered him with batons and shocked him with a Taser again and again. When the man was bloodied and unconscious, the Border Patrol agents turned their attention to a nearby pedestrian bridge, where shocked onlookers gawked and recorded with small cameras, a witness said. “I heard someone passing say ‘la migra,’” Ashley Young, one of the people holding a camera that night, told The Washington Post, using the Spanish phrase for immigration agents. “I looked around, and two officers were coming across the bridge to shoo people away, to make sure people would stop watching.” The immigration agents were grabbing people’s cameras one by one, Young said, and asking, “What did you record? We’re going to delete it.” Young made a quick decision before she got to the end of the line: “I slipped the SD card into my pants.” The story of Hernandez’s 2010 death at the Tijuana-San Diego border, backed up by the video on that card, exemplified the brutality of the law enforcement officers who patrolled the border and the impunity with which they act, advocates for Border Patrol reform say. The United States settled a lawsuit with Hernandez’s estate last month, agreeing to dole out $1 million to his five children and his common-law wife, Maria Puga. The battle could have dragged on for years longer in court, the family’s attorney said, but they were worried President Trump could make Hernandez’s death a political issue amid efforts to beef up border security. Still, none of the agents involved have been fired or disciplined or “lost a dime of pay,” for a beating that broke five of Hernandez’s ribs, damaged his spine and ultimately killed him, according to Eugene Iredale, the family’s attorney, who claims the immigrant was handcuffed as he was beaten."