Editorial:
It was a late Tuesday afternoon, at the Tijuana/San Diego border, the busiest crossing in the world. As always it was crowded with thousands of cars and people crossing. Suddenly three vans filled with immigrants made a mad dash across the border. What the media described as a dash really wasn’t much of a dash; with traffic congestion and numerous barriers, where one can barely drive faster than a walk? In the 3 vans were 78 undocumented immigrants that smugglers were transporting. One has to ask what the smugglers were thinking and if they actually believed they could smuggle their people by driving across the international line. Obviously one has to conclude that the smugglers were delusional.
The US Border crossing is designed to stop vehicles from dashing across the border with tire shredders. Cement barriers that are designed to slow vehicles down. To say nothing of the sheer number of cars that cross, which are a deterrent to any vehicle that attempts to speed across the border. With the checkpoint designed as it is the three vans immediately came to a stop. One of the vans was stopped and was pinned with nowhere to go. The other two vans attempted to back up into Mexico, and that is when all hell broke loose.
According to reports; the vans started to back up when two Customs and Border Protection officers and one U.S. ICE agent thinking their lives were in danger-opened fire on the vans. Suddenly, thousands of innocent bystanders found themselves trapped in the incident. Scared women, children, and men were trapped in the vans, their lives placed in danger as officers fired indiscriminately in their direction. Also, no forethought or any regards was given to the safety of innocent bystanders who became terrorized by the firing of the weapons, and trapped in the line of fire.
As expected, one innocent by stander was wounded in the shooting, and four individuals wounded in the vans. We can only be grateful that no persons in the vans or innocent bystanders were killed. There has been no report of what happened to the drivers of the vans, one would assume that they should have been the targets of the agents?
La Prensa questions why the shooting took place at all. If the vans for all intents and purposes were trapped due to the backlog of vehicles behind them, question, how were the agents’ lives placed in danger? Also, if the agents were standing behind the vans, question, were they shooting at the drivers, the tires or just indiscriminately, without any regard or concern for the safety of others? We feel a sense of outrage because the innocent bystanders who were thrust into a life and death situation could have been a family member, friend, or in fact any person going about their daily business.
We pose the question as to how much danger the officers were really in, and if the situation justified the firing and use of deadly force in the crowded international U.S./Mexico crossing?
These are legal questions that the community and La Prensa raise to the U.S. Attorney, San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, and the San Diego’s congressional delegation. The community of San Diego and Tijuana has the right to know if the next time there is a similar situation at the San Ysidro/Tijuana crossing, if the response will be the same wild, wild west show with border patrol and ICE agents firing guns indiscriminately with innocent people in the line of fire, or will the above public officials insure residents that a more tempered, and professional response is forthcoming?