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John Boehner has a new gig!
John Boehner and former Massachusetts Governor William Weld have been hired as lobbyists by a group advocating the legalization of marijuana. Boehner said "My thinking about cannabis has evolved."
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Sunday, April 8, 2018
A previous injection of military forces on Mexican border resulted in useless tragedy
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By EDUARDO MONTES
The Associated Press
As the combat ready marines approached Esequiel Hernandez Jr.
lay
writhing on the ground,
trying to speak what would have been his final words.
A single round from an
M-16 had pierced the 18-year-old's side. Soon, he would
become the first American
casualty of U.S. soldiers enlisted to fight the war
on drugs.
He may also have been
the last.
Hernandez's death on a
rain-swept evening a year ago Wednesday ignited a
national controversy
over armed patrols on the U.S.-Mexico border, leading the
military to suspend such
patrols two months later. Not one armed soldier has
returned since.
"We don't know when
and if those missions will be reinstated. To be very
honest, we don't believe
they will. The entire operation was put under
scrutiny. I just don't see
us going back into that business," said Lt. Col.
Jere Norman, spokesman
for Joint Task Force Six, the agency that coordinates
anti-drug missions
between the military and civilian authorities.
The Pentagon created the
El Paso-based JTF Six in 1989 after the White House
declared drugs a
national security threat, opening the door to limited
military involvement in
interdiction efforts.
Critics charge the move
eroded the 1878 Posse Comitatus act prohibiting the
military from performing
civilian law enforcement functions.
It was "against the
democratic values and beliefs of this country since the
Declaration of
Independence," said Maria Jimenez director of the Immigration
Law Enforcement
Monitoring Project, a watchdog group.
Opponents also said
putting armed military patrols among civilian populations
was inviting tragedy.
Hernandez's death on May
20, 1997, seemed to prove them right.
Hernandez, a 10th grader
from Redford, a remote border town 200 miles
southeast of El Paso,
had been grazing his goats near the Rio Grande when he
crossed paths with a
four-man Marine patrol.
The team had been placed
on the river at the request of the U.S. Border Patrol
to conduct surveillance
of a suspected drug route.
What happened next has
been the subject of debate.
The Marines said
Hernandez fired at them twice with a .22-caliber rifle,
prompting the
camouflaged soldiers to trail him for about 20 minutes until he
raised his rifle a third
time.
Team leader Cpl.
Clemente Banuelos, fearing a fellow Marine was in danger,
responded by firing a
single round from his M-16. The bullet struck Hernandez
under the right armpit
and ripped across his body. Within the hour, he was
dead.
Family members deny that
Hernandez would ever have knowingly shot at the
Marines and say he only
carried the vintage rifle to shoot targets or protect
his small goat herd from
wild dogs. Local and federal authorities acknowledge
he wasn't involved in
any wrongdoing when he was killed.
"It's something
that you can't understand, why it happened, why they had to
kill him, why it had to
be done," said Hernandez's older brother, Margarito.
"We can't accept
they had a reason to kill him. It was wrong."
Amid his painful
recollections, Margarito Hernandez did express some
satisfaction with the
discontinuation of the missions that had placed armed
soldiers directly on the
border.
Civil rights advocates
are pleased as well, but they're wary because the
Pentagon could reverse
the decision. Even if it doesn't, JTF Six will still be
involved with police,
including training them in military tactics.
"It's a different
threat," said Tim Dunn, author of "Militarization of the
U.S.-Mexico
Border." "It's a more severe threat if they're out there with
guns. But if the other
facets of the relationship ... continue, that's still
dangerous."
Supporters of military
involvement see a different threat.
"We should not
unilaterally retreat from the war on drugs because there is a
tragedy," said Paul
Marcone, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant,
D-Ohio. "The
(suspension's) net effect is that we have more cocaine and
heroin coming into the
United States."
Traficant has urged the
Defense Department to resume the patrols and, for the
second time, he plans to
introduce legislation this year that would allow
increased military
participation.
Norman, the JTF Six
spokesman, said he's not sure civilian agencies would even
want armed soldiers to
return.
Tomas Zuniga, a
Dallas-based spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, traditionally
one of the agencies seeking the most military
assistance, stopped
short of agreeing, but his response was telling.
"If it became
available to us," Zuniga said, "we'd have to take a long hard
look at it. Shame on me
once, but not shame on me twice."
Two grand juries, one
convened by Presidio County officials and another by the
U.S. Justice Department,
cleared Banuelos in the shooting. The military
maintains Banuelos and
his three fellow Marines followed the established rules
of engagement and acted
appropriately.
The Presidio County
panel noted that while Hernandez may have been firing in
the Marines' direction,
he likely didn't know they were there.
However, the grand jury
left enough unanswered questions that District
Attorney Albert Valadez
asked a judge for transcripts of the federal testimony
and is considering
whether to reopen the case.
"`There were big
holes that never got filled and it's going to remain that
way until somebody is
satisfied that the witnesses are telling the truth,"
Valadez said. "I
wasn't really satisfied that they were, but my opinion
doesn't matter and I
didn't have any proof otherwise. It was just based on my
feelings."
He said he has spent
every free moment reviewing the documents, but won't
discuss what he's seen
except to say it appears military officials who
"stiff-armed"'
him were more cooperative with federal authorities.
Another investigation is
being conducted by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio,
chairman of the House
immigration subcommittee, who also has complained of
government stonewalling.
Meantime, Hernandez's family
is pursuing a claim against the government and
for the past several
months has been negotiating with the Justice Department
for compensation, said
family attorney Bill Weinacht.
Thursday, April 5, 2018
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