Mexican families denounce U.S. border killings

*With helplessness and pain reflected in their testimonies, they demand that the IACHR condemn the deaths.

By María Fernanda Ruiz. Once Noticias. Mexican Press Agency.

It was October 2012. José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, 15, was walking near the border in Nogales, Sonora, when he was caught by a burst of gunfire; eight bullets struck his back and two hit his head.

“Why so much rage, why so many bullets?” Taide Elena, a relative of José Antonio Elena, asked.

Two years earlier, in 2010, Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, also 15, received three gunshot wounds—to the hand, back, and one eye—that caused his death while he was near the border wall on the Mexican side.

“If a Mexican killed a little kid over there, they would immediately take him away, immediately say he was guilty. While they are never guilty of anything; whatever they do, they’re always get off scot free,” said María Guadalupe Güereca Betancour, a relative of Sergio Adrián Hernández.

In 2012, Guillermo Arévalo was celebrating his daughters’ birthday at the Río Bravo park when a bullet struck him in the chest. He died on the way to the hospital. It occurred in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. He was 34.

“Suddenly they started shooting toward the Mexican side, they just began, and one of the bullets hit my husband in the chest and he fell to the ground,” recounted Nora Isabel Gallegos, Guillermo’s wife.

Those responsible for these cases and three others were Border Patrol agents who fired from the United States, and their bullets— which do not recognize borders—pierced the bodies of Mexicans who were inside Mexico near the border line.

The cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court but encountered a brick wall. Mexicans do not have the right to sue the agents for the effects their actions have in other countries, and in 2020 the cases were admitted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

“And to make the stories visible, we decided to submit an additional merits brief in October 2025 to compile the evidence against these agents, such as the lack of respect for the standards, the imminent danger that the United States has caused, the deaths of migrants in other contexts,” said attorney Jordee Rodríguez.

Today they ask Mexico to take a stand in order to apply international pressure and for the IACHR to condemn the killings.

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