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120 Epilogue “Where the Bad Guys Are” In November 1989, President George H. W. Bush supported General Colin Powell’s order to establish Joint Task Force 6 (JTF-6) at Fort Bliss, Texas.1 The task force’s original mission was to “to serve as the planning and coordinating operational headquarters to support local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies within the Southwest border region to counter the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.”2 JTF-6’s original area of operations consisted of the four border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. In February 1995, by directive of the commanding general of US Army Forces Command, JTF-6’s area of responsibility was expanded to include the entire continental United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. In June 1997, responsibility for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands transferred to US Southern Command.3 JTF-6 was created amid a flurry of protests by political and civic groups who felt that the military outfit violated the law of posse comitatus, which forbade the use of the military for law enforcement activities. By restricting the military’s role to surveillance and technical backup, legal consistency prevailed.4 Nevertheless, social and political pressure to win the “War on Drugs” in the late 1980s and early 1990s encouraged President Bush to form JTF-6 and expand governmental role in law enforcement.5 In 1991, at least six hundred troops from the Army’s Seventh Infantry Division conducted Operation Block It in the southwestern corner of New Mexico in Hidalgo County.6 At the same time, a contingent of US Marines assisted Doña Ana County officers with the arrest of drug smugglers in southern New Mexico.7 In 1997, JTF-6 would see their services called to Redford, Texas, a small border town of roughly one hundred inhabitants in Presidio County that the United States Border Patrol had identified as a major drug corridor.8 On the evening of May 20, 1997, seventeen-year-old Esequiel Hernández Jr. of Redford, Texas, took his modest herd of goats out to the Rio Grande. Hernández took along with him a World War I–era .22 caliber rifle because some wild dogs had harassed the goats on a previous occasion. At some point while the goats grazed, Hernández fired two shots. Although it is not clear why Hernández fired into the desert bushes, the consequences were severe.9 Unbeknownst to the young man, Hernández had fired in the direction of US Marines from JTF-6 who were in their third day of a reconnaissance mission in the area and were heavily camouflaged and largely undetectable to the common civilian.10 The soldiers were each wearing clothing that rendered their presence “unclear whether they were shrouded by land bunkers or vegetation cover.”11 Marine Corporal Clemente Banuelos interpreted Hernández’s inadvertent fire as an aggressive attack against his “where the bad guys are” 121 company by a suspected drug trafficker and responded with a single shot, striking Hernández’s chest. The four densely camouflaged United States Marines approached their target only to find seventeen-year-old Esequiel Hernández Jr.’s dangling feet; he had fallen into a well after being shot. They soon discovered that the man they believed to be a menacing drug traf- ficker was in fact a young American high school student, tending to his goats and shooting at what many law enforcement and military experts concluded were wild dogs or the vacant desert breeze.12 Hernández’s family heard the helicopters and sirens wailing near their property. Esequiel’s father hopped in his truck and searched for his son, unaware that he had been killed. A deputy informed Mr. Hernández that Esequiel died of a gunshot wound after having been fired on by US Marines. An investigation by the Texas Rangers, Department of Defense, and local law enforcement ensued, raising several questions including the justification for the shooting. For example, at the time of the shooting, Corporal Banuelos and the three other privates in the patrol never identified themselves to Hernández. However, Marine Colonel Thomas Kelly said later that the Marines responded within the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s peacetime rules of military engagement.13 The Department of Defense and military officials quickly went on the defensive following the incident. Local, state, and national media outlets...

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