US Govt Doesn’t Dispute that Border Patrol Murdered a Mexican Teen but Claims Agents Aren’t Liable b/c It Occurred Across an Imaginary Political Border & Involved a Non-Citizen. Sup Ct to Decide

NO REMEDY FOR UNPROVOKED SHOOTING BY GOVERNMENT AGENTS? According to FUNKTIONARY: Sovereign immunity - ''government" so-called, applying the law of the jungle to its relationship to the people. We are bound by the written law but those who wrote the law are bound by the law of the jungle. Makes you feel like a fool, doesn't it? Minority rule majority fooled? Surely, on earth as it is in heaven. Why would we ever allow "government" to assert the position that it is not bound by the same law that binds us? The answer is that we are fools sweet-talked by judges into believing that the "natural state of affairs" is to bind the people by law, and the "'government" by fiat. "Government" has replaced religion as the opiate of the masses using the Media as its subduing gasses (fumes of subterfuge). (See: CHAOS, Overrulers, Judicial System, Constitution, Law, Domestication, Justice, Economics, Civilization, Weitiko Disease & "Government") 

territorial borders - occult political conjurations superimposed upon natural human relations creating the imaginary partition of the planet earth. (See: Political Borders, Government, Assumptions, Beloved Community & Kingdom of Heaven).

LAW OVER HUMANITY SYSTEM. From [HERE] The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider once again whether the family of a Mexican teen has an implied right to sue in U.S. courts for his fatal cross-border shooting by a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

The high court granted cert in the case of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, who was 15 when he was shot and killed in June 2010 by an agent on the Texas side of the border. The Supreme Court had returned the case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans for further review in 2017.

On remand, the 5th Circuit ruled that Hernandez’s family could not sue. The 9th Circuit at San Francisco reached the opposite result in a similar case involving a Border Patrol agent in Arizona. The facts are as follows:

On June 7, 2010, Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, a 15-year-old Mexican national, was with a group of friends in the cement culvert that separates El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Now all but dry, the culvert once contained the waters of the Rio Grande River. The international boundary runs down the middle of the culvert, and at the top of the embankment on the United States side is a fence. According to the complaint, Hernández and his friends were playing a game in which they ran up the embankment on the United States side, touched the fence, and then ran back down. At some point, Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa, Jr., arrived on the scene by bicycle and detained one of Hernández’s friends in United States territory as the friend ran down the embankment. Hernández ran across the international boundary into Mexican territory and stood by a pillar that supports a railroad bridge spanning the culvert. While in United States territory, Mesa then fired at least two shots across the border at Hernández. One shot struck Hernández in the face and killed him. According to the complaint, Hernández was unarmed and unthreatening at the time. [MORE]

Contrary to elite media reports, the US Govt in its filings does not dispute the above facts. Their defense simply revolves around immunity for the above stated actions.

The case raises the question of whether a plaintiff who plausibly alleges that a federal law enforcement officer violated Fourth and Fifth amendment rights while serving within the official scope of employment can sue for damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. 

Specifically, the Government has argued that the 4th Amendment does not apply to persons outside the US and a so-called Bivens case has never been used to sue for damages on a 5th Amendment basis and may only be used for suits for 4th Amendment violations committed by federal agents. Leaving the teen’s family with no remedy. The Government’s response states:

“…the cross-border shooting at issue here must present a “new context” for a Bivens claim. Id. at 817. Because Hernandez was a Mexican citizen with no ties to this country, and his death occurred on Mexican soil, the very existence of any “constitutional” right benefitting him raises novel and disputed issues. Id. There has been no direct judicial guidance concerning the extraterritorial scope of the Constitution and its potential application to foreign citizens on foreign soil.

To date, the Supreme Court has refused to extend the protection of the Fourth Amendment to a foreign citizen residing in the United States against American law enforcement agents’ search of his premises in Mexico. United States v. Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 110 S.Ct. 1056, 108 L.Ed.2d 222 (1990). Language in Verdugo’s majority opinion strongly suggests that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to American officers’ actions outside of this country’s borders. Hernandez, 885 F.3d at 817; see also Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 274–275, 110 S.Ct. at 1066. In Hernandez, the Court itself described the Petitioners’ Fourth Amendment claims as raising “sensitive issues.” Id.; Hernandez v. Mesa, ___ U.S. ___, 137 S.Ct. 2003, 2007, 198 L.Ed.2d 625 (2017). “

The plaintiff’s have explained that no other remedy is available. Stating,

Two federal statutes—the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) and the Westfall Act—combine to ensure that result. On the one hand, the “foreign country exception” to the FTCA means that, because the locus of the injury at issue was in Mexico, any claim against the federal government will be barred by sovereign immunity. See 28 U.S.C. § 2680; Sosa v. AlvarezMachain, 542 U.S. 692, 700-712 (2004). On the other hand, the Westfall Act provides that, so long as Agent Mesa was acting within the scope of his employment when he shot the Hernández family’s son, state tort law claims are barred, and an FTCA claim against the federal government is the exclusive non-Bivens remedy. See 28 U.S.C. § 2679(b). That is so even though an FTCA claim is unavailable due to the “foreign country” exception to the FTCA. Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 420 (1995). [MORE]

There is no statute similar to Section 1983 that explicitly provides individuals with a means to sue federal  officials who violate federal rights while acting under color of federal law. However, the Supreme Court held that, even without a specific statute, federal officials may be sued for damages and injunctive relief for violations of the 4th Amendment. These lawsuits are usually referred to as Bivens  actions. Federal courts have jurisdiction to hear Bivens  actions under 28 U.S.C. § 1331(a). A Bivens  action is the federal equivalent of a Section 1983 action.

In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, this Court held that a damages action will lie against federal agents, acting under color of federal authority, for their alleged violation of a plaintiff’s constitutional rights. 403 U.S. 388, 395-397. (1971). The Court grounded such claims in the proposition that the ‘“very essence of civil liberty”’ requires that there be a remedy for injuries to rights. Id. at 397 (quoting Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 163 (1803)); accord id. at 392 (‘“[W]here federally protected rights have been invaded,”’ courts can ‘“adjust their remedies so as to grant the necessary relief”’). In Bivens itself, then, Bivens’s lack of available remedies for the violation of his Fourth Amendment rights justified creating a judicially-implied cause of action for damages.

This is the second time the court has entertained this case. In 2017 the Supreme Court sent the case back to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit requesting the court reconsider in light of an earlier decision that disallowed the claims by the teenager’s family.

The court of appeals has twice ruled that the border-patrol agent could not be held liable for shooting the teen. The Supreme Court will hear the case during its next term, which begins in October.