MEXICO CITY (CN) - On Sept. 3, 2012, Guillermo Arevalo Pedraza was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent while celebrating his wife and daughters' birthdays.
"It just so happens that my two daughters and I all share the same birthday. There's a little park right by the river in Nuevo Laredo where we brought meat to grill and just to hang out," said his widow, Nora Isabel Lam Gallegos, in an interview at a Border Patrol Victims Network meeting this week in Mexico City.
The Border Patrol Victims network is an organization of families affected by Border Patrol violence and volunteers who represent them in order to seek justice.
"We heard a little boat in the river, going back and forth. It seemed like there was someone in the river, swimming," said Lam Gallegos.
The boat was a Border Patrol vessel making its rounds on the Rio Grande.
"Someone from the boat started shooting, and they were shooting toward the Mexican side of the river. That's when they shot my husband. A bullet hit him and he fell to the ground."
That same year, on Oct. 10, Jose Antonio Rodriguez was killed in Nogales, Sonora, by a U.S. Border Patrol agent. He was 16 years old.
"I can tell the story. It's the same story that we all know. I am the grandmother," said Taide Elena in an interview. "Our little Tony was walking down the street called International Street, which isn't actually right up against the border like it is now. It was higher up on the hill.
"So, he was walking along, and about 20 feet behind him was an older man who saw when the first shot was fired. He saw the boy fall face down. He fired 30 shots. He ran out of ammo and reloaded and kept shooting. He hit Antonio eight times in the back and twice in the head," added Rodriguez's mother Araceli.
Marisol Garcia Alcantara crossed into Nogales, Arizona, on June 16, 2022. She was in a white truck when sirens rang out and she was intercepted by Border Patrol.
An agent shot Garcia Alcantara in the head and then took her to the Florence Correctional Center, where she stayed for 22 days before eventually being deported.
"I call it an accident, because I don't like to see it any other way, even though I know it was something else," said Garcia Alcantara in an interview.
Beyond the violence, what all three families have in common is that none of their aggressors have been held criminally accountable.
They make up the Border Patrol Victims Network, which held a press conference at the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center A.C. in Mexico City on Thursday to shed light on their plea for justice within the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.
Represented by law firm Hilliard Shadowen, they first filed a petition in September 2020 to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. A second petition was prepared for the commission last month.
Jordee Rodriguez, one of the lawyers representing the families, said Thursday that their case is based on three points.
"One is the arbitrary deprivation of life, another racial discrimination and militarization of the border, and the judicial abandonment of the victims following the United States Supreme Court decision in the case of Hernandez against Mesa that annulled all recourse within United States courts for these victims," Rodriguez stated.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that ruled that the family of Mexican teenager Sergio Adrian Hernandez Gereca, who was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr., across the border in 2010, could not sue the agent in U.S. courts.
In practical terms, the ruling closed the door for victims of cross-border shootings to seek damages in U.S. courts, even when the shooter is an American officer acting on U.S. soil.
"The U.S. Border Patrol's misuse of 'imminent danger' has led to the unnecessary deaths of more than 100 migrants in high-speed chases, the death of migrants due to lethal buoys in the Rio Grande, the death of migrants at the hands of anti-immigrant paramilitary groups that assist the U.S. Border Patrol and the extrajudicial bombings of presumed Latin American narcotraffickers in international waters," she said.
Nicholas Shadowen, another lawyer representing the families, said a decision by the commission should be made within the next year.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, along with the separate Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, is part of the Organization of American States, a group of 35 independent states in the Americas whose main pillars are democracy, human rights, security and development.
The Inter-American Commission handles petitions to promote human rights, while the Inter-American Court issues binding judgments.
Though the case is being heard by the Inter-American Commission and not the Inter-American Court, Shadowen stressed the importance of this petition.
"A public report from the Inter-American Commission confirming that the United States violated binding human rights obligations matters. It becomes a part of the international record, something the United States cannot bury, rewrite or ignore," said Shadowen. "It will give the families of the victims what they have never received: recognition, accountability and a legal finding that the U.S. has to answer for on the world stage."
In 2016, Alliance San Diego and law experts from the University of California, Berkeley International Human Rights Law Clinic filed a similar petition with the Inter-American Commission on behalf of the family of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas.
Hernandez Rojas was beaten and tortured by border agents on May 28, 2010, and died of his injuries three days later. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated his death but declined to prosecute.
This past April, the Inter-American Commission found the events of his death occurred in a context of discrimination, that the use of force in this case was unnecessary and disproportionate and that the original proceedings involved destruction of evidence.
According to the Southern Border Communities Coalition, 351 people have died at the hands of the U.S. Border Patrol since 2010. No agent, however, has ever been convicted of criminal wrongdoing while on duty.
Violence at the U.S.-Mexico border has been an ongoing issue for decades. And although border crossings from Mexico to the U.S. dropped from 47,932 in September 2024 to just over 3,000 in September 2025 after U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, "use of force incidents" tracked by CBP report a recent increase in the nominal amount of cases that "required use of force."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and National Border Patrol Council did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Courthouse News correspondent William Savinar reports from Mexico City. Courthouse News correspondent Lucia Cholakian Herrera is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Source: Courthouse News Service
