Tim Steller's column: History helps explain Border Patrol killing of O'odham man

Raymond Mattia’s concerns about the growing influence of smugglers in his distant corner of the Tohono O’odham Nation prompted him to speak out.

“A lot of stuff is happening here, and people are not acknowledging it,” Mattia told me.

That was 21 years ago, in 2002. Mattia’s tip about the bad effects of organized crime in his area inspired me to write a long, front-page story in the Star. Among other things, he said, Tohono O’odham police were usually too far away to help when trouble arose.

“We either go to the Border Patrol or protect ourselves,” he said.

Now the question of whether Mattia did just that — call the Border Patrol for help — is central to the anguishing search for an explanation of why he is dead. On the night of May 18, Mattia, 58, was shot near his home in Menagers Dam village by Border Patrol agents and perhaps by a Tohono O’odham police officer — or maybe not.

Two starkly different versions have emerged of what happened that night, and a deeper explanation lurks in the history of an area riven by the current border in 1853.

Mattia’s family says that he called the authorities for help that night because of border-crossers on his property. The village, also known by its O’odham name, Ali Chuk, is less than a mile from the U.S.-Mexico line and about 140 miles, or a 2 1/2 hour drive, southwest of Tucson.

“Raymond called for help and, in turn, was shot down on his doorstep,” his family said in a statement.

In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Annette Mattia, Raymond’s sister and neighbor, said she was on the phone with him just before the shooting occurred.

She reported that he calmly told her when agents arrived, “‘OK, I’ll go talk to them,’ and then two seconds later, that’s when I heard all the gunfire.”

Border Patrol officials and the union representing agents offered a completely different version. They said agents were only there because they were assisting a Tohono O’odham police officer responding to a call about shots fired during a possible domestic violence incident.

The account by the agents’ union says that Mattia threw a machete at the officers that landed a few feet away. That, though, is not what prompted the agents to fire. The agency said they fired moments later when Mattia suddenly extended his arm toward them.

On Saturday, a couple of dozen people, some of them relatives of Mattia or from his village, protested in Tucson outside the Border Patrol’s sector headquarters on East Golf Links Road.

Years ago, these conflicting stories would likely have remained unresolved. That would have left an aggravated sense of injustice on the reservation, where agents are often viewed as an occupiers, though at times residents also rely on them for help.

Now, at least the final part of the incident will be better explained. Border Patrol agents now use body cams, and the agency began releasing videos of critical incidents after a different killing in Southern Arizona this year.

Killing north of Sasabe

When a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a man in the area between Three Points and Sasabe March 14, the agency took its time releasing a statement. After the Pima County Sheriff’s Department announced the killing, the Border Patrol’s first released information on March 18: A detailed, 646-word description, far different from the perfunctory news releases of past years.

The existence of video evidence that was going to be released necessitated a full explanation of what the public was going to see. This alone is a good result of the use of body cams.

While the agency’s statement seemed to validate that March shooting, the video of that incident was not particularly edifying. To my eyes and those of some other outsiders, the agent looked unnecessarily aggressive. After the smuggling vehicle stopped in a dirt pullout, the agent pulled up behind, stopped his vehicle rushed toward the smuggling car and smashed out the window with his baton, then fatally shot the driver.

It’s true that the driver, 38-year-old Noe Mejia, put the car in gear and began moving it as the agent stood alongside, grabbing the driver’s arm. This, I’m guessing, will probably prevent the agent from being charged with a crime — a decision that the Pima County Attorney’s Office is currently weighing.

But as the helpful Border Patrol narration showed, using satellite images of the area, the load vehicle was essentially trapped in this pullout next to a remote road off of Arizona 286. With more agents piling into the area, the driver was unlikely to escape.

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Plenty to question in shooting

On May 22, the Border Patrol gave a detailed account of their version of the killing of Raymond Mattia, also four days after it happened in this case. Again, it relied heavily on the body-cam video we will eventually see, at least in an edited form.

In their version, the agents responded to a request for help from Tohono O’odham police and met with a tribal officer at a local recreation center before going to Mattia’s home, letting the tribal officer lead.

This agency’s statement says: “The individual threw an object toward the officer as they approached the structure which landed a few feet from the officer’s feet. Shortly after the individual threw the object, he abruptly extended his right arm away from his body and three agents fired their service weapons striking the individual several times.”

In a statement, the attorney for the agents’ union, Jim Calle, identified the object that Mattia allegedly threw as a machete, but he said some of those present couldn’t tell what it was in the dark. Mattia apparently was not armed when he was shot.

Beyond whether Mattia called for help and what prompted the gunfire, the investigation ought to be able to answer some other key questions, such as:

Did the Tohono O’odham police officer fire his weapon? If not, why did he not fire when the Border Patrol agents did?

Was Mattia the subject of the domestic violence call that agents said they were responding to?

Who fired the shots that the Tohono O’odham police were responding to, if they happened at all?

Did the agents who shot Mattia know him from previous experience that could have affected their response?

‘Now it’s dangerous’

Of course, all these questions focusing on the narrow incident that night miss a bigger picture. For many O’odham people, the presence of so many Border Patrol agents on their putatively sovereign land amounts to an occupation.

The fact that the line between Anglo colonial world and the Spanish colonial world found its angle of repose across O’odham lands is what made places like Menagers Dam centers of smuggling that federal agents frequent.

Magdalena Martinez, who is from the village and was protesting Saturday, said she did not tend to turn to federal agents for help when it was needed, even if the Tohono O’odham police sometimes did.

“I’ve never felt that the Border Patrol provided me safety,” she said. “If anything I felt they were an intrusion into our community. I felt safer and protected without them there.”

Fellow protester Ligel Macias, also from Menagers Dam village, said his mother, still living there, will have to worry now about whether to call Border Patrol when migrants show up on her property.

“Who does she call now?” he asked. “Now it’s dangerous.”

The historical drawing of that line put Raymond Mattia in regular contact with Border Patrol agents through his adult years.

While the investigation should clarify whether he called for Border Patrol help that night, body-cam video will reveal key details of the rest of the incident.

But the deeper reason Mattia died at the hands of agents he sometimes relied on for help probably belongs to this longer-term history that made his homeland part of the borderlands.