A bridge too far?

Something happened in Progreso, Texas last Feb. 13… unless it happened in Nuevo Progreso, Coahuila.

Edwina P. Garza in the (Harlingen-Brownsville) Valley Morning Star writes:

… five Winter Texans said that on Feb. 13, they saw a group of armed men in military fatigues escort a blindfolded man from the Mexican side of the bridge to the U.S. side and place him on the guardrail before pushing him off. Among the witnesses was a South Dakota family that took two photographs of the incident and gave them to the Valley Morning Star.

The bridge in question is privately owned, and — spanning an international border — who patrols the bridge is anyone’s guess.  Several of the “winter Texans” (retirees who spend the cold months in south Texas) who witnessed the event claim they saw someone throw an inner tube to whomever it was that was pushed off.  One couple reported hearing a gun shot later.

Something must have happened.  None of the witnesses sound like the kind of people who make things up.  The “military fatigues” might mean anything… Mexican security guards (and some of those in Texas) often wear military style clothing, so that might not mean official involvement.  However…

Jim Martin said he told a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent what he and his wife had seen.
“He said they knew about it and his supervisor was going to check it out,” he said of the agent.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Felix Garza said he had not been informed of other agents receiving reports.
“It’s something we should look into,” Garza said.
A fourth person has come forward to tell what happened to him shortly after the incident.
As the Martins returned home, a Donna man said he was going into Mexico to buy antibiotics.
The man, who asked that his name be withheld because of his dual U.S. and Mexican citizenship, said he was walking into Nuevo Progreso when what he took to be a CBP official wearing a bulletproof vest stopped him.
The Donna man said he had passed the turnstile and was about to reach the covered walkway when he met the official.
“He asked me, ‘Are you planning to go on across?’” the Donna man said.
The official told him there had been a shooting, the man said.
“I asked if they had apprehended the shooter, and he said, ‘No, it was the military,’” the Donna man said.
The official then told him that the military had taken a handcuffed man, shot him and threw him over the bridge, the Donna man said.
“He told me, ‘I’m just letting you know; you can walk over,’” the man said.
As he continued walking to Mexico, the man said he stopped at the midpoint of the bridge where the United States ends and Mexico begins. He waited for a couple also heading south and asked them if the official mentioned the incident to them, he said.
The couple said the agent had not told them anything, he said. …

Garza said the official at the bridge could have been hired by the company that owns the bridge, and might not have been a CBP agent.

Whatever it was that happened (and I half-wonder if given that whoever was tossed in the river was tossed in on the U.S. side, and thrown an inner-tube, whether some particularly obnoxious client wasn’t being evicted — and informally deported — from one of Nuevo Progreso’s less savory tourist attractions) ,  Garza can only tell us that nobody’s talking…

PROGRESO — When he first heard of armed men in fatigues pushing a man off the U.S. side of the Progreso International Bridge, the owner and president of the Progreso Bridge company was incredulous.

“But when I saw the pictures in the paper, I believed it,” Sam Sparks said….

“I’m sure that’s what happened,” Sparks said. “I don’t think tourists exaggerate.”  …

He could call Progreso police, he said, but it is out of their jurisdiction. The only form of constant security Sparks has at the bridge is in the parking lot, he said.
“I have hired an outside agency who has personnel to patrol the parking lot to stop possible theft,” he said.
“We can’t arrest anybody,” he said.
Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, like many other officials, was unaware of the incident.
“This is the first I hear about it,” he said Friday.
Treviño said he is briefed every morning by department captains.
“I know for a fact that I wasn’t made aware of it,” Treviño said.
In his 20 years in law enforcement along the border, with three as sheriff, Treviño said he has never heard anything like it.
“Not in broad daylight,” he said.
Someone must make a report for his office to look into the incident, he said.
“We cannot initiate this call,” he said. “Somebody needs to be the reporting party.”
With a reporting party, deputies can begin an investigation. But first someone needs to make a notarized statement.
“We should be looking at this,” Treviño said.
The sheriff and the bridge’s operator were the only officials who had much to say about the Feb. 13 incident.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Felix Garza said last week he had not heard anything new.
“There is no comment at this time,” Garza said Friday.
Comment also was missing from a long list of other officials and offices the Star tried to reach during the past week.
The Mexican Consulate, the offices of U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison and U.S. Reps. Rubén Hinojosa and Solomon Ortiz, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City declined to comment or were unavailable.