CBP agents practice fast-roping in border patrol training. (Flickr/CBP Photography) Rock throwers pose a deadly threat to these guys?

Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher says his agents will continue to use lethal force against rock-throwers on the US-Mexico border because rocks are apparently “lethal weapons”.

Fisher was responding to recommended reforms by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a nonprofit law enforcement advisory group that suggested Customs and Border Protection (CBP) quit using lethal force against rock-throwers and vehicles.

Fisher told the Associated Press that such reforms are too “restrictive”.

“Just to say that you shouldn’t shoot at rock-throwers or vehicles for us, in our environment, was very problematic and could potentially put Border Patrol agents in danger,” said Fisher.

CBP has killed 20 people at the border since 2010, eight of who were involved in rock-throwing incidents. Among them was Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas, an unarmed and undocumented Mexican immigrant who was tased and beaten to death by more than a dozen Border Patrol agents while hogtied and pleading for help at the border in May 2010. His murder prompted a call by 16 members of Congress for an internal review of CBP use-of-force policies, hence the PERF recommendations. More than three years have passed yet no one has been held accountable.

Clearly, getting the Border Patrol to fall in line with basic policing standards, which are still quite brutal, requires more than just a government-sanctioned review board. Until politicians grow a spine and demand some accountability, throwing rocks, or simply being undocumented near the border like Hernandez-Rojas was, is enough for Border Patrol agents to murder with impunity.

The AP goes on to trumpet Border Patrol claims about just how dangerous rocks can be. The arguments are nearly identical to those made by Israeli forces who routinely use lethal force against defenseless Palestinian communities, particularly child stone-throwers.

“[I]f you throw a rock at a Border Patrol agent, they may very well shoot you defending themselves,” National Border Patrol Council Vice President Shawn Moran told FOX5 San Diego, because in America, once a racist colonizer, always a racist colonizer.