The Supreme Court as shaped by Donald Trump has proven itself to be highly partisan. Even in issues that don’t directly affect the President, they seem to be ruling in a way that he’d agree with.
NBC News reports that the Supreme Court has ruled that the parents of Sergio Hernandez Guereca cannot sue the Border Patrol agent responsible for his death in 2010. Guereca, who was 15 at the time, was playing a game with his friends on the cement culvert that divides the two countries. The agent, Jesus Mesa Jr., arrested one of the children for illegal border crossing. Guereca ran back to the Mexican side of the border when Mesa made the totally reasonable decision to shoot a 15-year-old boy in the back of the head.
American authorities investigated the shooting and cleared Mesa saying he shot in self-defense as smugglers were throwing rocks at him. The investigators failed to find evidence that Guereca threw anything, though. After the investigation, Mexican prosecutors filed murder charges against Mesa. The U.S refused Mexico’s extradition request so the parents filed suit against Mesa in response. Their case was thrown out by American courts on the grounds that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable force didn’t apply to a person outside of the U.S.
Justice Samuel Alito explained in the ruling that since this was an international incident that this required a diplomatic solution and not a legal one. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg responded in a dissent on behalf of the court’s liberal minority saying, “It scarcely makes sense for a remedy trained on deterring rogue officer conduct to turn on the happenstance subsequent to the conduct — a bullet landing in one half of a culvert, not the other.”
It’s disappointing and honestly disheartening. A child was murdered playing a dumb game and nothing will happen because of a technicality. This ruling, combined with the current administration’s frequent attempts to dehumanize immigrants shows just how little life is valued if it doesn’t carry a white face.