January 7, 2006	Saturday	Zilhaj 6, 1426

MEXICO CITY: Mexican President Vicente Fox was under increased criticism here on Thursday for his government’s response to the shooting last week of a Mexican national during a confrontation with the US Border Patrol just a few yards north of the international frontier near San Ysidro.

Guillermo Martinez Rodriguez, an 18-year-old Mexican identified by US authorities as an immigrant smuggler, was allegedly shot and fatally wounded during the clash on Dec. 30 on the US side of the border.

Commentators here have suggested that the agent involved be tried in absentia in a Mexican court, and that the Fox government make it clear to the Bush administration that the human toll of the US crackdown on illegal immigration is unacceptable.

“The defence of the life, the physical integrity and the human rights of our compatriots on US soil cannot be delayed any longer,” the influential daily newspaper El Universal said in an editorial on Thursday.

El Universal called on the Mexican government to pressure the United States to sign an immigration accord that would allow Mexicans to migrate northward ‘in an orderly fashion’.

Tijuana resident Martinez Rodriguez was part of a group of people throwing rocks at US Border Patrol agents, according to news reports in Mexico. Wounded during the confrontation near a ladder smugglers were using to scale a fence, he fled back across the border. He died of his wounds in Tijuana, his relatives said.

Border Patrol officials acknowledge that one of their agents fired at a suspected illegal immigrant on Dec. 30 who was throwing rocks. But they say they cannot confirm that the bullet struck the suspect, since the man then retreated to Mexico.

Mexican authorities say Martinez Rodriguez was killed by a shot fired from a distance of seven to 15 feet. The bullet struck him from behind and passed through his neck, they said.

“This is the kind of tragic thing that occurs when people try to illegally cross the border,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters on Thursday at a San Ysidro news conference. “There is zero tolerance for violence along the border.”

Relations between the two countries remained strained on Thursday, with new reminders of the increasingly chaotic and dangerous situation along the 2,000-mile border as thousands of Mexicans and other foreign nationals seek to cross illegally every day.

US officials in Texas reported on Thursday that Border Patrol agents have come under fire twice recently along the Rio Grande. No agents were injured in the Texas shootings.

On the night of Dec. 30, gunmen on the Mexican side of the frontier opened fire on a Border Patrol boat that was cruising the Rio Grande.

“We don’t believe this was a random shooting,” Jose Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas, said in a telephone interview. The gunmen, he noted, were able to strike the boat five times, even though it was moving quickly in the darkness.

And late on Wednesday, unknown gunmen fired on agents on patrol in Brownsville.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the death of Martinez Rodriguez was ‘tragic for the families and the individuals involved’. He said the US government would reply privately to a Mexican ‘diplomatic note’ demanding an investigation of the incident.

On Thursday, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said he had received a call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during which she promised that US officials would investigate the incident.—Dawn/Los Angeles Times News Service