Border Patrol Issues New Guidelines On Lethal Force, But Advocates Say Little New

US Border Patrol Chief Michael J. Fisher issued new guidelines on Friday on agents’ use of lethal force while on the job. The 4-page memo directs agents not to fire upon moving vehicles unless they have a reasonable belief that “deadly force is being used against an agent or another person present”. It also directs them not to step in the way of moving vehicles as a means of stopping it. Most notably, it orders agents not to use lethal force against rock-throwers along the border unless the rocks or other projectiles could pose “an imminent danger of death or serious injury.”

The guidelines come a little over two weeks after 41-year-old Mexican man Jesús Flores Cruz was shot and killed after allegedly throwing rocks at a Border Patrol agent. Flores Cruz was the 21^st person to be killed by Customs and Border Patrol agents since 2010 and the 43^rd since 2005. No agents have been known to face disciplinary action in consequence. A recent investigation based on over 1,600 use-of-force reports carried out by the Arizona Republic found that agents who used less-lethal weapons in resolving rock-throwing incidents – which are frequent along the border – did so to overwhelming success.

Recent reports show Border Patrol agents have acted without regard for identical guidelines in the past. Buzzfeed noted on Thursday that a report performed by an independent group of law-enforcement experts and made public by the Los Angeles Times last week found that in 67 cases leading to 19 deaths, agents violated existing Border Patrol use-of-force guidelines by stepping in the way of moving vehicles, intentionally putting themselves in the sort of danger necessitating the discharging of their firearms. The agency released those previous guidelines last week after long refusing to do so.

Chris Rickerd, a policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the Washington Times that the new memo “leaves much to be desired” and called for independent inquiries to be carried out into all deadly-force incidents from over the last five years. “It is largely a restatement of existing policy, which is a shame because clearly existing policy isn’t working.”