Yes, Mr. President, you can shoot rockers. No, not the music aficionados, but the Mexicans and others who throw rocks at Border Patrol Agents (BPA), or anyone else. Border violence is in the news again. As I said two years ago when this first came up, LadyDACA, Kirsten Nielsen, and LadyboyDACA, Kevin McAleenan, lied about the legal response by BPA or any other Federal, State, or local law enforcement officer, to being attacked by a person throwing a rock [Mr. President, You Can Shoot Rockers, by Federale, Federale Blog, November 4, 2018]. Just as LadyDACA lied, so did John Kelly and James Mattis about Posse Comitatus, as James Fullford explained yesterday [Disloyal Kelly And Mattis Refused To Let Trump Use Troops To Defend Border, March 11, 2020]. There is a Deep State and it is very active. Sadly, President Trump keeps appointing these saboteurs.
Here’s what happened when Trump told reporters when asked what American troops would do if migrants threw rocks. Trump said: “If they want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. I told them, ‘Consider it a rifle.’”
Nielsen and her top aides, who were traveling to New York for meetings and had watched Trump’s remarks on Fox News, were horrified. The president had just suggested, in comments carried live on TV, that American soldiers had license to shoot to kill migrants at the border. Once again, they dropped everything to head off a presidentially created crisis. Nielsen frantically asked her staff to find the CBP use of force policy and send it over to the White House immediately. Someone had to show it to Trump and get him to walk back his comments right away, she said. Kevin McAleenan, the CBP chief, called DHS lawyers to discuss the policy. The rules were very clear. They stated that DHS personnel “may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer/agent has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of serious physical injury or death to the officer/agent or to another person.” If migrants were throwing rocks, it would have to be met with commensurate nonlethal force — not live ammunition from rifles, as the president had suggested.
The use of force by law enforcement, and specifically the use of deadly force, is governed by the Supreme Court decision, Tennessee v. Garner. The case held that a Tennessee statute that authorized deadly force to prevent the escape of a felon was unconstitutional and the decision established the standard that a law enforcement officer may only use deadly force to protect himself or others from a threat of deadly force or force that may cause great bodily harm. The U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), as well as other Federal, State, and local agencies, use that as the basis of their use of force policies. Here are the Use-of-Force guidelines for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2004. The standard is that deadly force may be used by an officer or agent when that officer or agent has a reasonable belief that there is an imminent danger of death or great bodily injury.
From the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) policy:
Authorized Officers/Agents may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer/agent has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of serious physical injury or death to the officer/agent or to another person.
a. Serious Physical Injury — Injury which creates a substantial risk of death or which causes serious disfigurement, serious impairment of health or serious loss or impairment of the function of any bodily organ or structure or involves serious concussive impact to the head.
Pay special attention to the lettered subparagraph, that specifically covers attacks by use of deadly missiles, i.e., rocks and other hard objects, commonly thrown by Mexicans and others attacking BPAs and Customs and Border Protection Officers (CBPO) who work at the land border.
And this is not a new issue, as well as one of controversy. It is completely legal for agents and officers to be victims of rock attacks. Rocks thrown by Mexicans have even taken down Border Patrol helicopters. [Violence Against The Border Patrol: Whose Side Is Obama On?, June 27, 2014]
Remember, a rock killed the Philistine giant, Goliath. Rocks are deadly.
Border Patrol Agent victim of rocking
Rocks can kill or cause great bodily injury. That is the legal standard for use of deadly force. So, LadyDACA and LadyboyDACA lied to President Trump about shooting rock throwers, rockers in the Border Patrol parlance.
But Barack Hussein Obama did not like it that Border Patrol Agents were shooting rockers, so his administration tried to prosecute BPAs who shot rockers. They, and the Trump Administration, indicted and tried a BPA, Lonnie Swartz, threetimes in an effort to protect illegal aliens. Swartz was found not guilty or had a hung jury in each attempt to railroad him. Border Patrol use of deadly force has always been a complaint from the left and they are always enraged that illegal aliens are getting shot for attacking BPAs with rocks.
The good news is that the Supreme Court has decided on the issue, at least in civil cases, that aliens outside the United States have no way to sue law enforcement officers who are engaged in cross border shootings.
A deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the family of a Mexican teen shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent cannot seek damages because of the border that was between them.
The justices ruled 5-4 that Sergio Adrian Hernández Guereca, 15, lacked constitutional protection against the use of excessive force because he was in Mexico. Had he been in Texas with Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa, his family would have had a claim.
Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion and was joined by the court’s four other conservatives. The four liberal justices dissented.
“A cross-border shooting claim has foreign relations and national security implications,” Alito said. “In addition, Congress has been notably hesitant to create claims based on allegedly tortious conduct abroad.”
So, there you have it Mr. President. You, the U.S. military, and Federal law enforcement officers can shoot rockers. It is completely legal. The Deep State lied to you, just as I told Stephen Miller, the bureaucrats are lying to you. Don’t believe them.
