According to this story in the Wall Street Journal, the US Supreme Court has rejected a suit brought by the family of a Mexican teen-ager shot to death by a US Border Patrol agent in 2010. The victim, Sergio Hernandez, was on the Mexican side of the border in Ciudad Juarez, while the agent, Jesus Mesa, Jr., was on the US side in El Paso.
The decision wasn't based on the facts of the incident but because "A cross-border shooting claim has foreign relations and national security implications", according to Justice Alito. He said it was a matter best settled diplomatically between the US and Mexican governments, not in the courts.
If this be the case, it brings to mind some other incidents with citizens of other countries, for instance the Russian hackers that have been indicted by the US for effecting the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the Chinese computer infantrymen that roiled the waters of credit giant Equifax in 2017. Neither of these countries allows extradition of their citizens to the US so they are unlikely to see the inside of a Yankee courtroom.
The US is now attempting to extradite Julian Assange, an Australian/Ecuadorian, from his cell in Belmarsh, England. The US wants to prosecute him for assisting in the publication of classified information illegally released by US soldier Chelsea Manning.
The US and Mexico have an extradition treaty. There is a possibility that the survivors of Mr. Hernandez could convince the Mexican government that an attempt to extradite the agent involved might be successful and worth attempting. One wonders what the response of the US government would be. After all, the Russian and Chinese hackers, and Julian Assange, haven't killed anyone.
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