Border Patrol slaying of woman provokes outrage
Agency’s statements differ on immigrant’s death in Rio Bravo
Hearing the gunshot, Marta Martinez rushed out of her home in Rio Bravo and began recording a video on her phone. She saw a woman lying motionless on the ground, bleeding from the head, Martinez said in the Facebook live video. She saw a Border Patrol agent holding a gun.
“Why did you shoot the girl? You killed her,” she yelled in the video. “She’s there. She’s dead. I saw you with the gun!”
“How are you going to shoot a girl in the head?” Martinez shouted.
The young woman was a 19year-old Guatemalan citizen named Claudia Patricia Gómez González, Guatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. She had recently entered the United States, leaving behind her poor community of San Juan Ostuncalco in search of a job and in the hopes of reuniting with her longtime boyfriend. But last Wednesday, she was shot and killed during a run-in with a Border Patrol officer, the agency said.
The shooting, which took place near the border in South Texas, has prompted anger from Gómez’s relatives in Guatemala and immigration activists across the U.S., raising tensions over the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement.
Changing defense
Border Patrol officials originally said in a statement last Wednesday that a lone agent responded to “a report of illegal activity” near a culvert in Rio Bravo when he came across a group of undocumented immigrants. When the Border Patrol agent tried to apprehend the group, “he came under attack by multiple subjects using blunt objects,” the agency said in a statement. He fired at least one gunshot, “fatally wounding one of the assailants,” the statement read.
The rest of the group ran away from the authorities, but agents managed to later apprehend three of them. Border Patrol agents called emergency medical services for Gómez and administered first aid until firefighters arrived.
But the Border Patrol’s message changed slightly on Friday. While the agency’s initial statement described the woman as “one of the assailants,” Friday’s statement referred to her as “one member of the group.” Officials said the immigrants ignored the officer’s orders to get on the ground and instead “rushed him,” according to the Associated Press and CNN. The second statement did not mention the throwing of any objects. The agent, a 15-year veteran, has been placed on administrative leave.
Immigrant rights activists and Guatemalan officials decried the agency’s inconsistent message.
“The Border Patrol changes its version and sows doubts about the death of an immigrant,” Carlos Narez, secretary of the National Council for Migrant Assistance in Guatemala tweeted Saturday.
Activists, Guatemala angry
The incident is under investigation by the FBI and Texas Rangers. Guatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it met with Gómez’s relatives, who asked that her body be sent to Guatemala. Foreign Affairs Minister Sandra Jovel called for a “thorough and impartial investigation” into the shooting.
The foreign ministry said Guatemala rejects “any acts of violence and the excessive use of force by the Border Patrol, and calls for the rights of our compatriots to be respected at all times, whatever their immigration status, especially the right to life,” the foreign ministry said. The three detained immigrants are all of Guatemalan origin and are all in good health, the ministry said.
In cities across the country, rallies and vigils are planned this week to honor Gómez’s life and demand justice for her death. One of the vigils is scheduled to take place in Alexandria, Va., where Gómez planned to reunite with her boyfriend of five years, Yosimar Morales.
“My heart is broken for this tragedy,” Morales told Univision, speaking from Alexandria. He came to the U.S. about one year ago, he said, and planned to marry Gómez and have children with her.
“They took away a piece of life,” he said.
In Guatemala, Gómez’s mother wailed in tears as she spoke of her daughter’s death. Gómez’s younger sisters leaned against their mother, also weeping.
“Why immigration, why did you kill my child?” the mother, Lidia Gonzalez, cried out while speaking to Guatemalan reporters.
Gómez, the oldest of three girls in the family, had graduated from high school in 2016 and hoped to pursue a career in accounting. Unable to attend college, she spent two years looking for jobs in Guatemala, with no luck. She decided to move to the U.S. in the hopes of finding work.
“There is no work here. That’s why my daughter left,” Gonzalez said. “She left home 15 days ago, saying: ‘Mamita, we’re going to go on ahead, I’ll make money. There’s no work here.”
“My daughter went there because of need, she didn’t steal anything,” the mother added.
Gómez’s father, Gilberto Gómez, was deported from the U.S. last year. He told local television station Guatevision that he hopes the officer who killed her “pays for what he did.”
Support for family
Dominga Vicente, Gómez’s aunt, appeared in a news conference with Guatemalan officials Friday, asking for financial support for the family. “We need the support of an institution that can lend us a hand” to put pressure on authorities and find justice for Gómez’s death, she said. She called for the officer who shot her to be removed from his post. If not, she said, such bloodshed will continue.
“She is not the first person to die in this country,” Vicente said. “There are many people that have been treated like animals and that isn’t what we should do as people.”
She called on the United States to stop mistreating immigrants, “just because it is a powerful country, just because it is a developed country.”
“Don’t treat us like animals,” she said, harking back to comments made by President Donald Trump this month referring to undocumented immigrants as “animals.”