The killing fields of San Diego County
INS turns border into virtual minefield
By Bob McCubbin
San Diego
The first shooting incident happened Oct. 1 when two Border
Patrol agents fired at a car near Campo in San Diego's East
County, wounding the driver in the chest. They accused the
driver, a Mexican immigrant worker, of trying to ram their
vehicle.
Early on Oct. 3 in the same part of San Diego County, Border
Patrol agents fired at a fleeing vehicle they had tried to
stop. One shot struck inside the vehicle, but none of the
immigrant workers inside was injured.
That night, on a dirt road near the San Diego/Tijuana border
fence, there was another shooting incident, this time with
deadly results. An unidentified Border Patrol agent said he
fired his pistol, killing Oscar Abel Córdoba Velez, when
Córdoba threatened him with a rock as he was attempting
to arrest another man suspected of crossing the border
illegally.
The Mexican Consulate, however, was able to find six
witnesses who said Córdoba had nothing in his hands.
Twenty-four hours later, another Border Patrol agent,
patrolling a deserted border area near the Pacific Ocean, shot
another Mexican national to death.
U.S. government-instigated terror on the U.S./Mexico border
is nothing new. Even before Operation Gatekeeper got underway,
the San Diego border area was militarized: heavily patrolled by
agents on foot and in vans, brightly lit at night, surveyed by
regular helicopter overflights, and partitioned by an ugly
metal fence made of Vietnam-era portable landing strip
sections.
Beatings of immigrant workers by Border Patrol agents were
common, and, occasionally, the body of a border crosser would
be found sprawled in an isolated canyon or floating in the
Tijuana River.
Since the implementation of Operation Gatekeeper in 1994,
the situation along the San Diego/Tijuana section of the border
has made unauthorized crossings even more difficult and
dangerous because of more lights, more agents, new fences and
new technology.
The result is that many immigrant workers now try to make
the crossing in East County. If the Tijuana River and the deep
canyons present serious natural obstacles between Tijuana and
urban San Diego, the terrain and climate of East County are far
more daunting, far more dangerous.
The mountains are cold at night all year round. In the
winter the temperature is below freezing much of the time. And
winter is the rainy season, with occasional snow in the
mountains. Farther east is the desert. Daytime temperatures in
the summer are some of the hottest anywhere in the U.S.
It's a hard three-to-four-day hike from the border to the
agricultural areas in northern San Diego County. Since the
start of Operation Gatekeeper four years ago, at least 322
immigrant workers haven't made it. Their bodies have been found
in the rough terrain north of the California section of the
border. Most have died from exposure to the cold in the
mountains or from the heat in the desert.
The INS denies any responsibility. But it is the job of the
INS to implement the U.S. government policy of terrorism
against immigrant workers.
Whether it is forcing workers to trudge through the Cuyamaca
Mountains, raiding San Diego tourist venues to check workers'
documents, or rounding up sweatshop workers in Los Angeles, the
idea isn't to stop the use of immigrant labor by U.S.
businesses. It's to keep the workers terrorized, to keep them
from organizing, to keep down the cost of immigrant labor. And
now they've started using their guns for this purpose.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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