Border agent who ran over migrant receives probation
TUCSON — A former U.S. Border Patrol agent stationed in Nogales was sentenced Wednesday to three years of probation and supervised release for intentionally running over a Guatemalan migrant with his vehicle and then lying about it.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Ferraro sentenced Matthew Bowen, 39, to three years of probation for the misdemeanor charge of violating the rights of Antonin Lopez Aguilar, a 23-year-migrant from Guatemala.
Bowen, a 10-year veteran of the Border Patrol in Arizona, had submitted his resignation to that agency several days before he accepted an Aug. 12 plea deal from federal prosecutors that allowed him to avoid a jury trial and possible jail time.
In addition to the standard conditions for probation, such as a ban on the ownership of firearms and a requirement to check in regularly with a probation officer, Ferraro also ordered Bowen to complete 150 hours of community service within the three-year probation period.
Bowen admitted to striking Lopez Aguilar with his patrol vehicle on Dec. 3, 2017. The Guatemalan migrant had just crossed the border illegally near Nogales and the agent was attempting to arrest him.
Bowen subsequently lied in incident reports to cover up what he had done. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to drop charges against him for lying.
Border Patrol agents who witnessed the December 2017 incident testified against against Bowen and expressed their dismay over what had happened, according to records filed by prosecutors in federal court in Tucson.
Those records show Bowen had a history of excessive force accusations against him in the years prior as a border agent in the Nogales area. Those accusations included tackling migrants and pulling them up from the ground by their handcuffs.
He also had text message exchanges with acquitted Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz over a rock-throwing incident in 2017 in which Bowen referred to people throwing rocks from the Mexican side as “mindless murdering savages.”
Juries acquitted Swartz, in two separate trials, of murder and manslaughter charges for shooting and killing 16year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, during a rock-throwing episode in Nogales in October 2012.
Border Patrol officials in Tucson admonished or verbally reprimanded Bowen for some of the excessive force accusations against him. They also suspended him indefinitely and without pay in June 2018, after his indictment, up until his resignation in August.