Shooting to Kill Immigrants on the Mexican Border: WTF? A Border Agent Fired First at Immigrant Smugglers?

By Dave Lindorff

Sometimes it takes a small tragedy to call attention to expose a much bigger one.

The small tragedy happened when Nicholas Ivey, a US Border Patrol agent, was shot dead on a dark night in rough terrain along the border with Mexico in Arizona, a state that has been obsessing about illegal border crossers coming into the US from Mexico seeking jobs.

The story, as reported by FBI and Sheriff’s Office investigators, as well as the border patrol union’s president, is that Ivey was with one set of border patrol agents responding to a motion sensor that had been triggered -- perhaps by a person or an animal -- and ended up getting shot by a second border patrol team that had also been dispatched to investigate, but that had approached the location from another direction. 

What reportedly happened is that Ivey opened fire on the other team, and when they returned fire, thinking they were under attack by armed smugglers, Ivey was killed. The incident is being called a case of “friendly fire,” a term that is used by the military for cases where US troops kill one of their own by accident in a firefight.

But the incident is more than just an accident. It highlights the sorry state that the gun-obsessed and war-crazed US has reached when it comes to the issue of immigration.

Unasked is the question: Why would a border agent investigating possible illegal border crossing take the first shot at someone he suspected of trying to sneak into the country?

Many of us in this nation of immigrants are descendants of people who sneaked, lied or cheated in order to get into this country. If Agent Ivey and the US Border Patrol had been around when our forebears tried to get their chance at the so-called “American Dream,” our forebears would have been slain, and we wouldn’t be around today.  

I can understand that a nation needs to have control of its borders. No nation have a free-for-all open border policy. But having said that, killing people for trying to find a better life is not an immigration policy. It is a war on the poor...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1369