Death in detention

Maria Puga has been telling the story for more than a decade now. On May 28, 2010, her husband, Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, suffered a brutal and ultimately fatal beating at the hands of U.S. homeland security personnel at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on the southern edge of San Diego.

The father of five was hogtied at a secure facility while at least eight agents and officers from the nation’s three border and immigration enforcement agencies punched and kicked him; a crowd of their colleagues circled around and watched. They knelt on his neck and body. Crying out for help, Hernandez was repeatedly tased while handcuffed. He suffered five broken ribs, internal organ hemorrhage, and bruising on his face and torso. He died of cardiac arrest and brain damage three days later. The coroner’s office ruled the case a homicide. Despite the federal agents erasing the video taken by eyewitnesses, the violent episode was caught on film and broadcast on national television. No agents or officers were punished, let alone charged for the killing.

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Last week, [Puga's family submitted] affidavits from three former senior Department of Homeland Security officials directly involved in Hernandez’s case to the commission. Those officials accuse the Border Patrol as well as current and former officials at the highest levels of DHS of engaging in obstruction of justice to protect the agents involved in Hernandez’s death and the reputation of their agency.

This was not an isolated incident, the former officials alleged in the affidavits, which were filed with the commission and shared with The Intercept. Instead, it was emblematic of an entrenched pattern in matters involving the Border Patrol, particularly in cases of lethal force.

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“What’s important to understand is that the people who are involved in this case have risen in the ranks,” Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego and an attorney for the Hernandez family, told The Intercept. “This is an ongoing threat to the safety of border communities and to the security of the nation when we have this level of impunity, unchecked, at the highest levels of this agency.”

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The Inter-American Commission system is best known for its role in examining incidents of state violence, massacres and enforced disappearances in Latin America. Last July, the commission ruled that it had the authority to hear the Hernandez case, marking the first time in its 61-year history that a U.S. law enforcement agency has stood accused of an extrajudicial killing.

  Intercept