Border marker at San Ysidro Port of Entry, via Border Patrol.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

The family of a Mexican teenager killed in a cross-border shooting a decade ago cannot sue the U.S. Border Patrol agent who fired the fatal shot from American soil, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the parents of 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, who was fatally shot in 2010 by Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr.

The teenager was on the Mexican side of the border when he was shot.

The central question: When Mexican teenagers are shot on the Mexican side of the border, can American families sue in U.S. courts?

The family of Guereca said the teenager was playing a game with friends when he was shot in the head by Mesa.

Mesa said he pulled the trigger because he was under attack by rock throwers.

The Supreme Court took the case in February 2017 but sent it back to a lower court for more proceedings.

At the time, the Trump administration argued the right to sue in U.S. courts “should not be extended to aliens injured abroad.”

The court’s decision will make it more difficult for foreign nationals to sue federal officers for civil rights violations.

“A cross-border shooting claim has foreign relations and national security implications,” Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote, The USA Today reports. “In addition, Congress has been notably hesitant to create claims based on allegedly tortious conduct abroad.”

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg disagreed because the shooting occurred on the U.S. side of the border.

“Neither U.S. foreign policy nor national security is in fact endangered by the litigation,” Ginsburg wrote. “Moreover, concerns attending the application of our law to conduct occurring abroad are not involved, for plaintiffs seek the application of U.S. law to conduct occurring inside our borders.”

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee fatally shot his wife and two sons before killing himself in their Florida home Thursday, according to authorities.

Orange County Sheriff’s deputies discovered four bodies at the home after CBP alerted authorities that they had not heard from the employee, whose identity has not yet been released, CNN reports.

The CBP employee was stationed at the Orlando International Airpot.

The employee’s sons were in middle school and high school.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

An off-duty FBI agent shot a man in San Francisco during an altercation in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood late Saturday night.

The shooting happened at 11:34 p.m. and left the man injured with two gunshot wounds to the chest, the San Francisco Examiner reports.

He was taken to a hospital and listed in non-life threatening conditions early Sunday morning.

The FBI agent, who was not identified, was uninjured.

A witness told the Examiner that three men were in an altercation, and one man slammed another against a wall before pulling out a gun and pulling the trigger at least twice. The witness said he saw the man with a gun pull out a badge and identify himself as law enforcement.

“The FBI takes any shooting incident involving our agents or task force members seriously,” FBI spokesperson Prentice Danner said. “In accordance with FBI policy, the shooting incident is under investigation by the FBI’s Inspection Division. The review process is thorough and objective, and is conducted as expeditiously as possible under the circumstances.”

The San Francisco Police Department’s Homicide Detail also is investigating.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A grand jury determined an FBI agent acted in self-defense when he shot and killed a Robinson, Texas, man while raiding a home with a federal search warrant in July.

The agent, who was not identified, was cleared of wrong doing in the shooting death of Joshua Steven Mitchell after the case was presented to a grand jury in mid-December, McLennan County First Assistant District Attorney Nelson Barnes told the Waco Tribune-Herald.

“The agent clearly acted in defense of himself and the other agents who would have been in the line of fire,” Barnes said. “Mr. Mitchell had multiple weapons next to him and he reached for one, putting the agents in danger.”

Barnes said photographs showed multiple weapons near Mitchell when agents confronted him, which suggested the agents were in danger.

Mitchell was shot four times in the head and neck, as well as once in the arm.

Richmond, Va., via Fairfax County.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

Suspected members of a white-supremacist group are accused of plotting violence at a gun rally in Richmond on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with the intent of causing what one described as “full-blown civil war,” prosecutors said in court filings.

The FBI set up a microphone and video camera at a Delaware apartment, where the suspects lived and discussed shooting “unsuspecting civilians and police officers,” derailing trains, sabotaging power lines, and poisoning water supplies, according to legal motions filed Tuesday and obtained by The Washington Post.

“We can’t let Virginia go to waste, we just can’t,” one of the men, Patrik J. Mathews, said, according to the court filings.

Prosecutors said the trio belonged to a militant hate group, “the Base,” inspired by English translation of “al-Qaeda.”

“Here’s the thing,” Matthews is accused of saying. “You want to create . . . instability while the Virginia situation is happening . . . derail some rail lines . . . shut down the highways” as a way to “kick off the economic collapse.”

Videos found on Matthews’ computer espoused “violent, anti-Semitic, and racist language,” according to prosecutors.

The other co-defendants are Brian M. Lemley Jr., and William G. Bilbrough IV, both of whom used gun parts “to make a functioning assault rifle,” according to court documents.

The trio was charged with federal firearms violations, and a court hearing is scheduled Wednesday.

Shooting captured on a live-streaming video on YouTube.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A former FBI agent who was serving as a voluntary clergy security guard reportedly fatally shot a gunman who opened fire at a Texas Church on Sunday.

The quick actions of the security guard were caught on a video that the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement was live-streaming on YouTube around 10:50 a.m.

The gunman, who had a rifle stashed under his coat, fatally shot two people before the church security guard quickly returned fire. The identity of the security guard has not yet been identified.

Another congregant, who also was serving as a voluntary security guard, returned fire as well, according to media reports.

“Two of the parishioners who were volunteers of the security force drew their weapons and took out the killer immediately, saving untold number of lives,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a press conference.

Former FBI agent and security expert Greg Shaffer said the quick response by armed guards demonstrates that more houses of worship should consider armed security.

“This incident certainly drives home the critical need of having an armed response,” Shaffer told 5NBC-TV. “Had they not been there, there would have been dozens upon dozens of casualties in that church.”

Ernesto Godinez

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A reputed gang member who shot an ATF agent in the face in Chicago last year was sentenced to nearly 17 years in prison Wednesday.

A federal jury found Ernesto Godinez guilty in June in the shooting of Kevin Crump, who was nearly killed when a bullet tore through his neck and exited between his eyes on May 4, 2018.

Godinez, 29, was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in prison, CBS News reports.

Calling the attack “brazen, callous, and cowardly,” federal prosectors said Crump is lucky to be alive.

“The depravity of the defendant’s crime is remarkable. A sentence of 30 years’ imprisonment is the only fair answer here, both to punish this reprehensible crime and to protect the community he endangered time and time again,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing recommendation.

Police said Crump was placing a tracker on Godinez’s car when the reputed gang member ambushed the agent and opened fire. Prosecutors said Godinez, who was arrested three days later, believed he was shooting a rival gang member.

Surveillance cameras captured Godinez before and after the shooting.

Godinez’s attorney acknowledges his client was in the area the morning of the shooting, but insists Godinez was not involved in the shooting. The 12-member jury didn’t buy that.

Photo via FBI.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

The FBI is joining the investigation into the attack that killed nine Mexican Americans last week near the U.S. border.

The deadly ambush in broad daylight left three women and six children dead after suspected drug cartels riddled the Mormon family’s SUV convoy with bullets on Nov. 4.

“The FBI will be providing assistance at the invitation of the Mexican government with the investigation into the recent attack against American citizens,” the FBI said in a statement, according to CNN. “The FBI remains committed to working alongside our international partners to help bring justice to the perpetrators of this heinous act of violence.”

Mexico’s foreign ministry invited the FBI to help.

Mexican authorities believe rival drug cartels attacked the family as part of a case of mistaken identity.

Last week, Trump offered to send U.S. troops to Mexica to “wipe” the cartels “off the face of the earth.”