In post-Newtown America, those with power say they must act to prevent another massacre of innocents.

The Obama administration wants stiffer gun control, and $150 million to help schools hire up to 1,000 more on-campus police or counselors, or purchase security technology. State legislators are considering shifting millions of dollars around to help schools hire more police. Some locals aren’t waiting: The 5,500-resident town of Jordan, Minn., has moved its entire eight-officer police force into schools.

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun,” National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said after a young man shot his way into his former grammar school on Dec. 14 in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

With the new year, the NRA has been flexing its political muscle, lobbying states not just to hire more school police — under the group’s National School Shield project — but also to pass laws allowing teachers or other staff to bring licensed guns to school to defend their students and themselves. 

After Newtown, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, was an early supporter of federal aid to hire more school police.“If a school district wants to have a community policing presence, I think it’s very important they have it,” Boxer told the Washington Post.

Beyond the headlines, though, the push for more cops or other armed security personnel in schools is running headlong into another movement that’s been quietly growing in states as diverse as Mississippi, New York, Utah, Texas and California.

It’s a push to get police out of schools, or at least to end their involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers. 

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Civil-rights groups and juvenile court judges — and even some officials within the Obama administration — argue that because the ranks of police began growing in schools in the late 1990s, the criminal justice system’s  involvement in student discipline has gotten entirely out of hand in some communities. That has put students, especially ethnic minorities, on a path to failure, they say — the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. 

In Los Angeles, for example, scores of students, most Latino or black and many just 11 or 12 years old, have been ticketed by school officers for minor infractions often categorized as disturbing the peace. In Austin, Texas, a 12-year-old was forced to court for spraying on perfume in class. In DeSoto County, Miss. officers and a school district were sued after a bus surveillance video — seen in part by a reporter — revealed officers unjustifiably arresting black students, the suit alleged, and threatening others with a “a bullet between the eyes.”

Optimists — Education Secretary Arne Duncan among them — say cops in schools are not an either/or proposition: Careful training, they say, will ensure that school police deployed in the wake of Newtown protect, rather than intimidate, students. 

But many civil-rights advocates are worried. They say plenty of cities and states are only beginning to come to grips with allegations that schools, and school-based police, have unjustifiably sent students into the criminal-justice system.

A push for security
Police presence in schools has been growing for years. The number of full-time city police officers assigned to schools increased nearly 40 percent from 1997 to 2007, according to the U.S. Justice Department. One infamous incident fueling that rise was the 1999 massacre of 12 students and a teacher by two students at Columbine High School in suburban Denver.  

After Newtown, though, an intense new round of calls for more cops in schools has echoed through small towns and big cities nationwide.

The state legislative delegation of Broward County, Fla., for example, quickly approved a proposal in January — it must now be approved by state legislators — that could allow increases in property taxes in Broward to pay for more school police, at an annual cost of up to $130,000 per officer.

The National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan research group, told the Center for Public Integrity that in February it began tracking a flurry of school-security legislation in more than 20 states.

Since January, two school-security bills in Mississippi, publicly backed by NRA representatives, have been moving fast through the Statehouse.

One bill would set up a $7.5 million school-security fund to offer Mississippi schools $10,000 matching grants to hire police. The other bill, which Mississippi’s House of Representatives approved  Feb. 13, would allow districts to designate teachers or other school staff to act as a secret defense force in the event of an attack. Volunteers would take their own licensed, concealed weapons to school. The House rejected a proposal to require psychological evaluations of those designated by districts.

Alabama legislators are considering creating a lottery to pay for a $20 million plan to put police officers in every school. Indiana lawmakers are weighing a proposal to set aside $10 million to offer grants to schools to hire local police to post in schools. States where legislators have introduced proposals to allow designated teachers or other school staff to be armed include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Texas and Utah already allow licensed gun owners to take weapons onto campuses under certain circumstances. Legislators in those states are discussing ideas for supporting school staff who want to have weapons at school for defense.

The NRA isn’t alone in trying to influence the debate. The Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, or NASRO, is pushing for more law enforcement in schools. NASRO opposes arming teachers. 

Stung by criticism of resource officers, the nonprofit NASRO vigorously disputes the idea that a school-to-prison pipeline is pervasive. In “To Protect and Educate,” a report issued last October, NASRO said: “Attacks against the school resource officer are superficial and polemical.”

On a Facebook page, NASRO has posted multiple news reports about school resource officers foiling violent acts by students.

Kevin Quinn, president of NASRO, said in an interview that NASRO regards cases of abuses by school police to be isolated. “The No. 1 way to combat that is training,” said Quinn, a school resource officer in the Phoenix area.

Quinn agreed with civil rights advocates that some school districts have become too reliant on police to enforce discipline. Over the last decade, more schools have adopted “zero tolerance” polices, not just for guns or other weapons or drugs, but for behavior that’s seen as disorderly or defiant.

“The problem,” Quinn said, “is the school at times says, ‘Oh, we’ve got a cop. Let him take care of things.’”

Out of hand?
Chief Juvenile Court Judge Steven Teske, of Clayton County, Ga., is not against police in schools, but firmly believes that a school-to-prison pipeline exists.

When Teske took the bench in 1999 in his Atlanta suburb, which is 66 percent black, one-third of the cases in his court were kids referred from schools. By 2004, he said, 92 percent of the 1,400 cases in his court came from schools, mostly for alleged disruption and disorderly conduct.

Lt. Francisco Romero, Clayton’s school resource officer at the time, told the Center for Public Integrity that he was disturbed to discover that one year he arrested more people — students — than any other officer in Clayton.

Fed up, Teske called together school and police leaders and hammered out a protocol requiring counseling and clear warnings before students were sent to court. Teske credits the protocol with improving relationships between students and police, and driving down juvenile felonies by 51 percent and increasing graduation rates by 24 percent.

“If police are placed on campus without written protocols defining their role, the results will be disastrous — just as removing existing police from campus can have unintended consequences,” Teske wrote in the publication Youth Today after the Newtown killings.

Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, a national civil-rights group urging discipline reforms, said that after the 1999 Columbine shootings, police citations of students in the city of Denver skyrocketed. Student referrals to police increased by 71 percent between 2000 and 2004. Only 7 percent of referrals to law enforcement from Denver’s schools, whose students are mostly nonwhite, were for serious offenses such as carrying a weapon.

In February, Denver school and police officials signed an agreement that obliges school police to “de-escalate” conflicts, attend training sessions on child psychology and embrace “restorative justice,” which requires students to sit down and resolve problems outside the criminal court system.

Dianis, whose group collaborated on the Denver agreement, hopes Denver’s decision influences other jurisdictions as they weigh putting more police in schools.

In Los Angeles — home to the country’s largest school police force — school leaders, judges, police and civil-rights activists have been holding a series of meetings to work toward a protocol for student citations and arrests.

The Center for Public Integrity analyzed Los Angeles Unified School District Police records and found that from 2009 through 2011, officers issued about 10,000 tickets a year to students, mostly in low-income neighborhoods.

More than 40 percent of citations, the Center also found, went to students 14 or younger in schools that parents said were more heavily policed. Juvenile court judges complained about a parade of children in court for infractions better dealt with at school.

Reconciling such findings with current security concerns is difficult, concedes Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program. Parker said it sounds “callous” to protest placing more police in schools after Newtown, a town that immediately after the December massacre assigned officers to guard schools.

But one of the ACLU’s high-profile lawsuits involving schools right now accuses New York City police — whose ranks have grown in schools by 73 percent since 1998 — of violating students’ rights by using excessive force, handcuffing and arrests in response to infractions such as drawing on a desk.

“It’s very likely that officers dealing with children in Newtown will deal with them differently than children in Harlem,” Parker said. “It is likely to be more of an ‘Officer Joe, your friend,’ who is there than someone who tells you to stand up against a wall and spread your legs.”

New York City police administrators insist that officers have lowered crime in schools and say that the ACLU “talks about arrests in schools but, conveniently, not crimes.” 

On Dec. 13, the day before the Newtown killings, Parker’s Racial Justice Program filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of ethnic-minority students allegedly rounded up by police in December 2010 at West High School in Salt Lake City.

The school district and the Salt Lake City police said they could not comment, because of a policy not to discuss pending litigation. 

The ACLU suit alleges that plaintiff Kevin Winston’s son, Kaleb, was 14 when two plainclothes officers ushered the student, who is half-black, into a room and falsely accused him of gang membership and graffiti, or “tagging.”

An officer allegedly grabbed Kaleb’s arm, told him, “Quit acting tough,” and searched his backpack. The suit claims that officers forced Kaleb, who has no juvenile record, to pose for a photo — to put in a gang database — holding a sign with his name and the word “tagger” on it.

After he was released, the lawsuit alleges, Kaleb was shaken, called his parents and asked to go home. The suit alleges that when Lisa Winston, his mother, protested what had happened officers told her the sweep was done because of “a problem with the Mexicans.”

On March 1, the Salt Lake defendants filed a court document admitting that police had entered the school and questioned students. But in the documents, they denied the officers "acted unconstitutionally" or were targeting “Mexicans.”

In February, a similar suit filed by the ACLU of Southern California in 2011 was partially settled on behalf of 56 students at Hoover High School in Glendale, Calif., near Los Angeles. The agreement does not contain an admission of wrongdoing, the Associated Press reported. 

The suit said that school administrators and Glendale police interrogated Latino and other minority students, and made them pose for mock mug shots.

Glendale police Sgt. Thomas Lorenz told the AP that the actions were an attempt to educate students on the peril of gangs. He denied that officers’ methods amounted to racial profiling.

“I’ve never been in trouble, and it was confusing, terrifying and humiliating,” Ashley Flores, who was 16 when the incident happened.

The settlement requires Glendale police and school officials to notify parents if students are to be questioned on campus. To ensure that officers uphold students’ rights, they will be trained to avoid racial profiling.

Walking the line
Michael Nash, presiding juvenile court judge in Los Angeles County, said in an interview that it’s hard to argue against placing police in schools — if they stay out of discipline matters.

As president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Nash sent a strongly worded letter to the Obama administration on Jan. 15, responding to the administration’s call for ideas on school safety.

“Research shows that aggressive security measures produce alienation and mistrust among students, which, in turn, can disrupt the learning environment,” the letter said. “Such restrictive environments may actually lead to violence, thus jeopardizing, instead of promoting, school safety.”

A student’s odds of dropping out of high school quadruple with a first-time court appearance, Nash wrote. Last summer, the judges’ council began a national campaign “to support school engagement and reduce school expulsion.” Putting more armed personnel into schools, Nash said, could prove “counterproductive” to this effort. 

On Jan. 16, the White House announced it would seek congressional authorization for a $385 million school violence prevention package for fiscal year 2014.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the president’s proposals would go to appropriate committees. A Washington Post poll in January suggested that the recommendation for hiring more school police would face little opposition. The poll found that 55 percent of the public would even support a law to put an armed guard in every school.

A centerpiece of the White House proposal is the request for $150 million to help schools hire up to 1,000 new police. But in nod to concerns like Nash’s, schools could also use grants to hire counselors and school psychologists.

The administration also proposes $50 million to help 8,000 schools create safer and more “nurturing” atmospheres at schools. Another $25 million would be used to help schools struggling with “pervasive violence,” and $30 million would be for one-time grants for states to help schools develop emergency plans.

A total of $130 million would be for helping schools adopt conflict-resolution programs and improving early detection of student mental health problems.

In a January media call, Education secretary Duncan was asked to respond to concerns that more police would lead to misguided crackdowns on students.

“There’s no reason why additional school resources have to drive up the schoolhouse-to-jailhouse pipeline,” Duncan said. “Execution is really important — taking time train people in a really thoughtful way.” The Department of Justice, he said, will be in on that training.

Duncan is no stranger to controversy over school discipline.

Between 2009 and 2012, the Department of Education launched more than 20 investigations into allegations in school districts that minority students were punished more harshly than white pupils for the same violations of school rules. Duncan’s department aims to amicably reach agreements with districts to change discipline practices. Last year, the department also released an unprecedented analysis of national school data showing that black students, 18 percent of the sample, represented 42 percent of students referred to law enforcement.

These issues have been aired in two Congressional hearings since December.  

In a February appearance before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, NASRO’s executive director, Mo Canady said the role of school resource officers is as “a trusted adult that a student can come to for information, for guidance.” He also said officers should leave “formal discipline” to educators.

Searching for balance
In Texas, police involvement in routine school discipline is a hot topic.

On Feb. 20, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Youth Law Center filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The complaint is based on citation records showing that black students in the Bryan Independent School District, 100 miles north of Houston, are given municipal court summonses in numbers far greater than the proportion of school enrollment they represent. 

Black students represent almost 22 percent of the 15,500-pupil Bryan district but were given more than half of all Class C misdemeanor tickets issued to students for “disruption of class” and “disorderly conduct,” according to the complaint. The complaint also says that staff of Texas Appleseed, a public-interest law group, observed Bryan students in court, including a 13-year-old whose teacher overheard him use profanity before class started and sent him to the principal, who, in turn, asked an officer to issue a ticket.

In a statement, the Bryan district said it would welcome “a dialogue” with federal education investigators. The citation numbers alleged in the complaint “were certainly no surprise to us, and we have been proactive in taking measures to address the issue,” the district said. “We hope the measures we are taking to support our minority students will result in a more positive outcome.”

Texas state Democratic Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, says it’s time to stop these tickets, which can cost families hundreds of dollars and end up creating a criminal record for the student.

He said legislators will have to search for a balance between security and smart use of school police. The Houston Democrat hopes to pass a bill this year to stop ticketing for basic misbehavior, and require alternatives for students before schools send them to court.

It used to be a “comforting” to see a police officer at school, Whitmire said. Then cash-strapped schools shed counselors, police stepped in as enforcers, and Texas courts, he said, began to expect revenue from student tickets.

“These police departments have grown and grown, and they have to justify their budgets,” Whitmire added. “They’ve even asked for legislation to be able to go (do enforcement) outside schools.”

But in response to Newtown, Whitmire is co-sponsoring another proposal with state Sen. Tommy Williams, a Republican from The Woodlands, to allow districts to try to raise taxes or other revenue to hire more school police or buy security technology.

He’d prefer adding police to arming teachers, Whitmire said, but he’ll “make damn sure,” he said, that more police doesn’t lead to more tickets. 

Mississippi state Democratic Rep. John Hines Sr. is concerned about safety, too. But he’s also trying to get fellow legislators more interested in allegations of a school-to-prison pipeline in his state.

In January, Hines, who chairs the House Youth and Family Affairs Committee, held a state public hearing to discuss the “Handcuffs on Success” report issued that month by the Advancement Project, the ACLU of Mississippi, the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and the Mississippi Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse.

The report notes that the Jackson Public Schools District was sued in 2011 in connection to allegations that its students were handcuffed to railings for dress-code violations or refusing to do their schoolwork. Without admitting wrongdoing, the district settled the suit last May with an agreement to stop handcuffing children younger than 13, and to only handcuff older students when they are accused of a crime. A review of Jackson police records shows, according to “Handcuffs on Success,” that 96 percent of student arrests at schools in 2010-11 were for misdemeanors, most for disorderly conduct. Only 4 percent were for suspected felonies.

Hines said he’s also troubled by a lawsuit the U.S. Department of Justice filed last October against Meridian, Miss, alleging that students there “are regularly and repeatedly handcuffed and arrested in school and incarcerated for days at a time without a probable cause hearing.” 

“I want kids safe,” Hines said. “I don’t want people coming off the street or an enraged child shooting people. But I don’t want lots of people all strapped up with guns at our schools either.”

The Meridian Public School District is among the defendants in the DOJ suit, which was filed against the city, the county of Lauderdale and judicial officials as well as the state of Mississippi. School Superintendent Alvin Taylor has said he's working cooperatively with federal investigators but has declined to elaborate. 

In its lawsuit, the Department of Justice noted that Meridian officials sent a letter in September, before the lawsuit was filed, claiming that allegations of violations were "moot" because the city had changed how police officers were to respond to requests from schools for assistance in dealing with a student. The Department of Justice's lawsuit asserts that such changes are not a "permanent" remedy to the allegations of violations of student rights.  

Also in Mississippi, police officers, the school district and employees named in a lawsuit triggered by the bus surveillance video showing officers arresting and threatening black students either denied wrongdoing or knowledge of some of the alleged events. By August the defendants had reached an undisclosed settlement with the plaintiffs, who were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Republican Lester “Bubba” Carpenter, who also serves in Mississippi’s House, is sponsoring the proposal to allow districts to designate teachers or employees as a secret “marshals” with permission to bring their own licensed, concealed weapons to school.

Mississippi is a “pretty poor state,” Carpenter said, so the idea is cost-effective. He’s not worried that teachers will panic and shoot in haste. 

“I think they’re smart enough individuals,” Carpenter said. “We trust them with our children every day.”

But Carpenter also supports the proposal to set aside $7.5 million so that schools can apply for $10,000 matching grants to hire police officers. 

“I’ll vote for both of them,” Carpenter said of the proposals. “You can’t get enough security at schools.”

Carpenter said he wasn’t that familiar with the allegations of police excesses alleged in the ACLU and U.S Justice Department lawsuits, or the “Handcuffs on Success” report.

“You’re always going to have a bad apple,” he said.  

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic go to publicintegrity.org.

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Notre Dame’s high-profile re-emergence among college football’s elite has brought new attention and fresh scrutiny to a two-year-old case involving a Notre Dame player and allegations of sexual assault.

In August 2010, 19-year-old freshman Lizzy Seeberg accused the athlete of sexually assaulting her in his dorm. She filed a report with campus police, which sat on it for two weeks before even interviewing him. By then, Seeberg had committed suicide. Administrators would later convene a closed-door campus disciplinary hearing — three months after Seeberg’s death became national news — in which the player was found “not responsible.”

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In the university’s only direct public comment on the Seeberg case, Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins told the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune in December 2010 that university police had conducted a “thorough and judicious investigation that followed the facts where they led and exhibited the integrity that I believe characterizes this institution.” He acknowledged, however, that the investigation could have been conducted “more quickly, perhaps.” Separately, the university issued a statement the same month  stating that it had no tolerance for sexual violence and had “a wide array of sexual assault education and prevention programs in place.”

The player, who has not been publicly identified in media accounts, has reportedly never missed a game, nor presumably will he miss Monday night’s national championship contest with Alabama’s Crimson Tide. The university has not disputed those reports.

Meanwhile, a small number of vocal critics are asking pointed questions about how this case was handled, and wondering aloud whether Notre Dame’s rhetoric about “Doing It the Right Way"--treating its football players like anyone else on campus--is really a fiction.

As tragic as the details of the Seeberg case are, they are far from unusual. The struggles that colleges have faced in addressing campus sexual assault were the subject of an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity beginning in 2009. Published in a six-part series, “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice,” the investigation showed that campus judicial proceedings were often confusing, shrouded in secrecy and marked by lengthy delays, leaving alleged victims feeling like they were victimized a second time. Those who reported sexual assault encountered a litany of institutional barriers that often led to dropped complaints. Even students found “responsible” for alleged sexual assaults often faced little punishment, while their victims’ lives frequently turned upside down. Many times, victims dropped out of school — or worse — while their alleged attackers graduated.

The series — done in collaboration with National Public Radio — shed light on what Education Department officials have since called “an epidemic of sexual violence” on campuses. According to a December 2000 report funded by the Justice Department, roughly one in five women who attend college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates. Much of the problem is up to the institutions to address, because prosecutors face imposing obstacles in filing criminal charges; allegations come down to he-said-she said accounts that may be colored by alcohol, while physical evidence and eyewitness testimony are often lacking.

In April 2011, the Education Department’s civil rights office unveiled its most thorough guidance on how schools must respond to student complaints of campus rape. The 19-page “dear colleague letter,” combined with a unique enforcement strategy, has spurred change at dozens of schools nationwide, including Notre Dame. There’s also proposed federal legislation aimed at combating campus sexual violence.

The guidance hasn’t pleased everyone, and the legislation is, for the moment, stalled. Sadly, cases like Seeberg’s continue to make headlines. The latest comes from elite Amherst College, where a former student has documented what she describes as callous treatment following an alleged rape by a classmate.

Highly emotional, colored by broader cultural stereotypes, these cases remain among the thorniest for colleges and universities.

Even so, lawyer Brett Sokolow, who advises college administrators, said he believes they have improved their handling of what he calls “the garden variety cases” — those without ties to money or influence.

But Sokolow said "the old rules" often still apply if the alleged assailant is a star athlete or a student president or the scion of a wealthy alumni family. Speaking generally, he said, "I'm not going to tell you the bad stuff isn't happening." He added that he was not involved in the Seeburg case and was not familiar with the details at Notre Dame.

Changes
That new federal guidance, announced with fanfare by Vice President Joe Biden, says schools have an obligation, under the federal law known as Title IX, to investigate student complaints, and to take prompt and effective action to end harm.

The guidance has drawn fierce pushback, much of it focused on a policy the civil rights office was already enforcing: that schools should rely on the more lenient evidence standard in these cases — “preponderance of evidence” rather than the higher “clear and convincing” or the strictest “beyond a reasonable doubt” evidence standards. Groups like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which advocates for free speech and due process, have penned multiple letters arguing that such a “weak” principle undermines, in its words, “the reliability, integrity and basic fairness of the disciplinary process.”

“We see the burden of proof on many campuses being the only protection an accused student has,” says FIRE’s Joe Cohn, whose last letter, in May 2012, included 19 professors, lawyers and other individuals as co-signers.

Taking a cue from the Education Department, many colleges and universities were using the preponderance standard when the guidelines came out. Others have followed suit. Some 40 schools at last count have also adopted what administrators describe as “the easy things” — policy reforms and procedural fixes like hiring a Title IX coordinator and offering appeal rights to both the accused and accusing students. Some administrators are even clamoring for more guidance to clear up lingering “confusion” about what Title IX requires.

By all accounts, the civil rights office has become far more aggressive since December 2010, when it announced its first in a series of “model” settlements with schools regarding policies on campus sexual assault. These settlements have emerged from “compliance reviews” that were pushed by the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, Russlynn Ali, who stepped down in early December. Unlike formal complaints, which students must file before the office can act, these compliance reviews have allowed the department to act proactively in response to allegations of campus sexual violence.

To date, there have been 11 such reviews — and the first one was at Notre Dame. Prompted by the Seeberg case, the civil rights office launched a seven-month investigation into how the school handles all sexual assault complaints. That ended in June 2011 with a “voluntary resolution agreement,” in which Notre Dame agreed to speed up investigations, adopt the “preponderance” standard and issue no-contact orders for alleged assailants and their alleged victims, among other things. Seth Galanter, the civil rights office’s acting director, declined to discuss the Notre Dame resolution, citing its “open” status. The office is currently monitoring the school to ensure its compliance.

Many of the reviews are ongoing, but the office has hammered out similar settlement agreements with such schools as Eastern Michigan and Yale. Last spring, it took the rare step of joining the Justice Department in examining how the University of Montana, as well as local law enforcement, handle campus rape allegations — after several prominent cases there, some involving football players. The civil rights office has even seen the number of formal complaints from students filed against schools soar to more than 120 in the past four years— a rise of more than 41 percent. Education Department officials believe these statistics in part indicate an increasing awareness of the recent federal efforts.

“One of our goals,” Galanter says, “is to make sure the April 2011 ‘dear colleague’ letter isn’t just a piece of paper.”

A multi-front struggle
Over on Capitol Hill, victim advocates have pressed for passage of the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act. Filed in the fall of 2010, the federal legislation was meant to codify the Title IX guidance, creating minimum national standards for colleges and universities. Two years later, after lobbying by FIRE and others brought about changes in the bill, some supporters now actually oppose it. The most notable change: the bill would no longer require schools to use the “preponderance” standard.

“Now we have this monstrous bill all wrapped up in nice sounding language,” says lawyer Wendy Murphy, a prominent victim advocate. She believes the bill, stripped of that mandate, would give institutions leeway to use a higher burden, thus in her view undermining the guidance.

Bill supporters counter that the SaVE Act would still require that institutions expand programs to offer prevention awareness and bystander intervention education, meant to stop sexual assaults from occurring. And the legislation would improve victim protection, they say, by guaranteeing counseling, legal assistance, and medical care on campus, as well as other accommodations.

“We didn’t get everything we wanted,” agrees Daniel Carter, a longtime victim advocate now with the VTV Family Outreach Foundation, who helped draft the original bill. But “no one was willing to sacrifice (the whole measure)” he explains, to preserve a few of its mandates.

Administrators and advocates alike expect the legislation to pass — eventually. It had been incorporated, as Section 304, into the Senate’s reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, but not the House’s. Advocates were pinning their hopes on the bill making it in the final version of VAWA until the House let it expire at the end of the congressional session on Jan. 3. Now, it will have to be re-introduced, as will the stand-alone version of the bill. Its sponsor, Sen. Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa., will keep working to ensure final passage of the Campus SaVE Act in the 113^th Congress, his office said.

For all the attention on campus sexual assault, it remains an intractable and complex problem. The cultural climate surrounding these cases is tense— especially those involving athletes. They are, after all, popular public figures who may be pivotal to the reputation and success of a school’s highest-profile programs.

It all feels painfully familiar to Laura Dunn, whose case was featured in the Center for Public Integrity series; in 2005, she reported her allegations of rape by a crew member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He denied the allegations. It took the university nine months to contemplate, and then reject, filing disciplinary charges against him. 

“It’s almost like you’re attacking something bigger than the individuals who assaulted you,” Dunn said. When she thinks about how much progress colleges have made in combating campus sexual assault, her thoughts turn to Lizzy Seeberg and that Notre Dame football player.

“Until college athletes are handled differently,” Dunn said, “nothing has changed.”

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic go to publicintegrity.org  

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GILGIT, Pakistan -- About 20 men dressed as Pakistani soldiers boarded a bus bound for a Muslim festival outside this mountain town and checked the identification cards of the passengers. They singled out 19 Shiites, drew weapons and slaughtered them, most with a bullet to the head.

The shooters weren't soldiers. They were a hit squad linked to the Sunni Muslim extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, or LeJ. They had trekked in along a high Himalayan pass that hot August morning to waylay a convoy of pilgrims.

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Here and across Pakistan, violent Sunni radicals are on the march against the nation's Shiite minority.

With a few hundred hard-core cadres, the highly secretive LeJ aims to trigger sectarian violence that would pave the way for a Sunni theocracy in U.S.-allied Pakistan, say Pakistan police and intelligence officials. Its immediate goal, they say, is to stoke the intense Sunni-Shiite violence that has pushed countries like Iraq close to civil war.

More than 300 Shiites have been killed in Pakistan so far this year in sectarian conflict, according to human rights groups. The campaign is gathering pace in rural as well as urban areas such as Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city. The Shiites are a big target, accounting for up to 20 percent of this nation of 180 million.

In January, LeJ claimed responsibility for a homemade bomb that exploded in a crowd of Shiites in Punjab province, killing 18 and wounding 30. LeJ's reach extends beyond Pakistan: Late last year, LeJ claimed responsibility for bombings in Afghanistan that killed 59 people, the worst sectarian attacks since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.

"No doubt - (LeJ) are the most dangerous group," said Chaudhry Aslam, a top counterterrorism police commando based in Karachi, whose house was blown up by the LeJ. "We will fight them until the last drop of blood."

For an outlawed group accused of fomenting such mayhem, the leader of LeJ is surprisingly easy to find.

Malik Ishaq spent 14 years in jail in connection with dozens of murder and terrorism cases. He was released after the charges could not be proved - partly because of witness intimidation, officials say - and showered with rose petals by hundreds of supporters when he left prison in July 2011.

Although Ishaq is one of Pakistan's most feared militants, he enjoys the protection of followers clutching AK-47 assault rifles in the narrow lane outside his home. There, in the town of Rahim Yar Khan in southern Punjab province, Reuters visited him for an interview.

"The state should declare Shiites as non-Muslims on the basis of their beliefs," said Ishaq, calling them the "greatest infidels on Earth." Young supporters with shoulder-length hair in imitation of the Prophet Mohammad hung on every word.

Following the trail
To assess the LeJ threat, Reuters followed the group's trail across Pakistan -- from Ishaq's compound, to Gilgit in the foothills of the Himalayas, recruiting grounds in central Punjab and the backstreets of Karachi on the Arabian Sea coast.

In interviews, police, intelligence officials, clerics and LeJ members described a group that has grown more robust and appears to be operating across a much wider area in Pakistan than just a few years ago. But it had a head start.

The LeJ once enjoyed the open support of the powerful spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI used such groups as military proxies in India and Afghanistan and to counter Shiite militant groups.

Since being outlawed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, LeJ has worked with Sunni radical groups al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban in several high-profile strikes. Among them were assaults in 2009 on Pakistan's military headquarters and on Sri Lanka's visiting cricket team. Washington says LeJ was involved in the killing of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002.

Now it is gathering strength anew. The risks are heightened by Pakistan's long-standing role as a battlefield in a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, which have been competing for influence in Asia and the Middle East since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

That competition has heated up since the United States toppled secularist dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq and left the country under the control of an Iranian-influenced Shiite government. Intelligence officials say the LeJ is drawing financial support from Saudi donors and other Sunni sources.

"Unfortunately, the state for strategic reasons turned a blind eye to the LeJ for a long time," said a retired army general. "Now we have a situation where it has become Pakistan's Frankenstein."

Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who is in charge of internal security, told Reuters that "we always take action" against the LeJ when the group is suspected of murder or terrorism. "We track people and arrest them."

When asked why those arrested are often freed, he said: "Look, my job is to arrest people, not to let them go. We all know who lets them off the hook and why," he said, referring to local politicians and elements of the military who turn a blind eye to their activities or even support them in some cases.

Sacred calling
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, whose name means Soldiers of Jhangvi (after its founder, Haq Maulana Nawab Jhangvi), isn't the only lethal militant group that once enjoyed patronage from the spy agency.

One is Lashkar-e-Taiba (Soldiers of the Pure), which fights against Indian control in disputed Kashmir. It is blamed for several deadly attacks on Indian soil, including the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, and an audacious raid on India's parliament in December 2001 with another Kashmiri militant group, Jaishi-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammad). That raid brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

Another is the Pakistani Taliban. Its attack this month on 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Swat was only the most recent in a long list of strikes on civilian and military targets, mainly in the unruly tribal area along the Afghan border.

What makes LeJ particularly dangerous, however, is that the group is based in Pakistan's Punjab heartland. And it is not just attacking targets in Pakistan's neighbors, but has also targeted the state, including the 2009 attack on Pakistan's military headquarters.

LeJ was established as an offshoot of another anti-Shiite organization called Sipah-e-Sahaba (Soldiers of Mohammad's Companions).

LeJ believes it has a sacred calling -- to protect the legacy of the companions of the Prophet Mohammad - and it sees Shi'ites as the main threat.

Mahmood Baber, educated in a madrassa, was drawn by LeJ's call to holy war against Shiite infidels. His 16-year career in the movement ended in October, when he and other LeJ members were arrested.

Handcuffed and with a cloth thrown over his head at a Karachi police station, Baber described for Reuters the "great satisfaction" he felt killing 14 Shiite "terrorists" over the years. His voice choked with emotion when he said that for 1,400 years Shiites had insulted the companions of the Prophet.

"Get rid of Shiites. That is our goal. May God help us," he said, before intelligence agents led him away for a fresh round of interrogation.

The schism between Sunnis and Shiites developed after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 when his followers could not agree on a successor. Sunnis recognize the first four caliphs as his rightful successors; the Shiites believe the prophet named his son-in-law, Ali. Emotions over the issue have boiled through modern times and even pushed some countries, including Iraq five years ago, to the brink of civil war.

Demonizing Iran
The LeJ's leader, Ishaq, lives in a house whose gate bears a sign inviting residents of the town to debate whether Shiites are infidels.

These days Ishaq calls himself a leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba, the LeJ parent group. Pakistani officials say he still runs, or at least inspires, LeJ. Ishaq denies any wrongdoing, repeatedly saying: "I've been acquitted." He has indeed been acquitted 34 times on charges of culpable homicide and terrorism.

He does not hide his feelings about Shiites, his voice growing strident as he opened a plastic folder filled with printouts from what he describes as Shi'ite Internet sites.

One contained a photo of a pig, an animal considered by Muslims to be dirty, and is accompanied by an insult to Sunnis. Another alleges the Prophet Mohammad's wife committed adultery -- all proof, he says, that Shiites are blasphemous, and deserve punishment.

"Whoever insults the companions of the Holy Prophet should be given a death sentence," Ishaq declares.

Ishaq and other hardline Sunnis believe that Iran is trying to foment revolution in Pakistan to turn it into a Shi'ite state, though no evidence for that is offered.

The Saudi connection
In the Punjab town of Jhang, LeJ's birthplace, SSP leader Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi describes what he says are Tehran's grand designs. Iranian consular offices and cultural centers, he alleges, are actually a front for its intelligence agencies.

"If Iranian interference continues it will destroy this country," said Ludhianvi in an interview in his home. The state provides him with armed guards, fearful any harm done to him could trigger sectarian bloodletting.

The Iranian embassy in Islamabad, asked for a response to that allegation, issued a statement denouncing sectarian violence.

"What is happening today in the name of sectarianism has nothing to do with Muslims and their ideologies," it said.

Ludhianvi insisted he was just a politician. "I would like to tell you that I am not a murderer, I am not a killer, I am not a terrorist. We are a political party."

After a meal of chicken, curry and spinach, Ludhianvi and his aides stood up to warmly welcome a visitor: Saudi Arabia-based cleric Malik Abdul Haq al-Meqqi.

A Pakistani cleric knowledgeable about Sunni groups described Meqqi as a middleman between Saudi donors and intelligence agencies and the LeJ, the SSP and other groups.

"Of course, Saudi Arabia supports these groups. They want to keep Iranian influence in check in Pakistan, so they pay," the Pakistani cleric said. His account squared with that of a Pakistani intelligence agent, who said jailed militants had confessed that LeJ received Saudi funding.

Saudi cleric Meqqi denied that, and SSP leader Ludhianvi concurred: "We have not taken a penny from the Saudi government," he told Reuters.

Saudi Arabia's alleged financing of Sunni militant groups has been a sore point in Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in a December 2009 classified diplomatic cable that charities and donors in Saudi Arabia were the "most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." In the cable, released by Wikileaks, Clinton said it was "an ongoing challenge" to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority. She said the groups funded included al-Qaida, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The Saudi embassy in Islamabad and officials in Saudi Arabia were unavailable for comment.

Shiite revenge
Some Shia groups do look to Iran's clerical establishment for spiritual leadership, but insist they have no aims beyond protecting members from Sunni attacks.

In the offices of a Shiite organization in Karachi, images of the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini are featured on a wall clock. There, a Pakistani Shiite woman named Shafqat Batool described what happened to her son, a judge, when he left for work on August 30.

Minutes after Sayid Zulfiqar stepped out of the family home in Quetta, she said, witnesses told the family three men on a motorcycle opened fire with Kalashnikov rifles. One of the assailants then grabbed a weapon from Zulfiqar's bleeding driver and pumped more bullets into her son.

It prompted Zulfiqar's family to move to Karachi. "We are not safe anywhere in the country," his mother said. "People are horrified, people can't sleep."

The fear is palpable in Quetta, the mountainous provincial capital of southwestern Baluchistan. LeJ has unleashed an escalating campaign there of suicide bombings and assassinations against ethnic Hazaras - Persian-speaking Shiites who mostly emigrated from Afghanistan and are a small minority of the Shiite population in Pakistan.

At least 100 Hazaras have been killed this year, according to Human Rights Watch, leaving some 500,000 Hazaras fearful of venturing out of their enclaves.

"We are under siege; we can't move anywhere," said Khaliq Hazara, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party. "Hazaras are being killed and there is nobody to take any action.

In Quetta and Karachi, Shiite leaders say they are urging young men to exercise restraint and buy weapons only for self-defense.

"We are controlling our youth and stopping them from reacting," said Syed Sadiq Raza Taqvi, a Karachi cleric, seated beside a calendar with images of Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

But with each killing, the temptation to take revenge grows.

Shiite extremists have not adopted the kind of attacks favored by LeJ. But they have hunted down members of the SSP.

One such case was an attack survived by Sohaib Nadeem, 27, son of an SSP member. Men he described as "Shiite terrorists backed by Iran" opened fire on the Nadeem family in their car. Nadeem survived nine gunshot wounds but his father and brothers were killed. "The Shiites are our enemies," Nadeem said.

Confederation of militants
When the Taliban and al-Qaida want to reach targets outside their strongholds on the Afghan border, they turn to LeJ to provide intelligence, safe houses or young volunteers eager for martyrdom, police and intelligence officials said.

"Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the detonator of terrorism in Pakistan," said Karachi Police Superintendent Raja Umer Khattab, who has interrogated more than 100 members. "The Taliban needs Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Al Qaeda needs Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. They are involved in most terrorism cases."

The massacre of Shiite bus passengers outside Gilgit has had a profound impact on this mountaineering hub in the Himalayan foothills. Never before had Sunni extremists asked for identification to single out Shiites and then kill them on such a large scale.

Sunnis and Shiites, who had lived in harmony for decades, now cope with sectarian no-go zones.

"Sunnis can't go to some areas and Shiites can't go to others," lamented Gilgit shopkeeper Muneer Hussain Shah, a Shiite whose brother was killed in a grenade attack.

When violence erupts, text messages circulate rallying one sect or the other. Shops and schools close. Authorities have banned motorcycles to stop drive-by shootings.

Law enforcement itself is a victim of sectarianism in Gilgit, said police chief Usman Zakria. Shi'ite officers are reluctant to investigate crimes committed by Shi'ites, and the same is true of Sunnis.

"They are in disarray," said Zakria. "None of this has happened before."

Additional reporting by Imtiaz Shah in Karachi, Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Islamabad and Matthew Green in Quetta. 

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NOGALES, Mexico – “They call me the soap opera guy.”

Jesus Castro Romo states his new nickname and gestures toward the small television in front of his bed. That’s where he spends most of his days, lying on his back in the bedroom he shares with his wife and youngest son, watching soap operas. Cartoons, too, and animal shows.

Ever since the Border Patrol agent shot him and the bullet damaged his spine, Castro has adjusted to a sedentary life. He used to drive a dump truck and do landscaping work. Now he walks with a cane.

“Now, I am more tranquil,” Castro says. “I think of my dad, my mom, my children, and everyone else. I am more conscientious about everything. Thinking. Here at home, locked up, I only have time to spend thinking and thinking.”

---

On this day, he moves to his covered patio that’s surrounded by chain link fence and drying laundry. He wants to share the story of his “terror” in the desert and his survival.

 

***

About a year-and-a-half ago, Castro was trying to sneak into the United States through Arizona’s hilly backcountry when a Border Patrol agent on horseback spotted his group of about 12 travelers. They scattered. The agent zeroed in on Castro.

Castro claims the agent, Abel Canales, beat him, hurled insults at him and then shot him in the side before riding away. He says he waited in the desert for an hour and a half, bleeding through his clothes, thinking about his children and preparing himself for death.

An emergency crew arrived and airlifted him to University Medical Center in Tucson, where he had three operations. Once he was well enough to be released, he claims he was handcuffed to his wheelchair, was not allowed to bathe or use a restroom and was denied access to a Mexican consular official.

Lawyers for the government said Canales acted in self defense, that Castro tried to throw a rock at him. Canales’s lawyer did not respond to requests for an interview, and a lawyer for the government declined to comment.

In January, Castro sued the U.S. government, a gutsy move for a Mexican citizen who entered the country illegally. The lawsuit is about compensation for lost income, but it also amounts to a last-resort effort in a system where Border Patrol agents are rarely prosecuted for violence against migrants, and where current immigration policy, the political climate and the authority of border enforcement agencies often combine to enable Border Patrol agents to have the last word.

A months-long collaborative investigation among nonprofit newsrooms in California, Texas and New York examined fatal confrontations with border agents and found that at least 14 civilians have died, most of them shot, since Oct. 1, 2009. This despite declines in both illegal immigration and assaults on officers.

Statistics gathered from Customs and Border Protection and compiled by reporters show one fatality four years ago and two the following year. In each of the last two years there were five and four so far this fiscal year. The agency has declined to comment in these cases.

Border Patrol agents have been prosecuted for other crimes, such as bribery and corruption, in recent years. But trials are rare for on duty situations involving lethal or excessive force.

A grand jury in San Diego took testimony last week in the death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, who died after being beaten and shot with a taser in 2010 in San Ysidro. U.S. lawmakers called for an investigation of the agents’ actions after a new video of the incident was aired by the PBS national newsmagazine, Need to Know, in April.

The circumstances in cases reporters investigated for this project vary: Some of the dead were Mexican, others U.S. citizens and at least one was Central American. Some were trying to cross illegally into the U.S. for the first time – a misdemeanor; others were allegedly involved in more serious crimes, like trafficking drugs. But they all died as a result of violent altercations with Border Patrol agents.

Castro’s lawyer, William Risner, a straight-talking type with a crisp white mustache, is unabashed in saying Castro’s lawsuit is about money. But he also said it’s the only way to get justice.

Canales was suspended from the force without pay -- but not for his actions in this case. Last October he was indicted on allegations he took bribes to allow drugs and illegal immigrants to be smuggled into the U.S.

Even in cases where a video has captured an altercation at the border, there are generally distinct differences in what witnesses and law enforcement say happened. Castro’s case is no exception.

****

Castro lives in a neighborhood called Colonia Esperanza, which is one mile south of the border as the crow flies. You can’t see the United States from his patio, but a quick drive brings the border wall into sight. His house, like others on his sloping street, is a pale pastel that stands out against the rocky hillside. That’s where he lives with his two children -- the youngest named after him, Jesus -- and his wife. He has two grown children from a previous marriage. He’s already a grandfather.

Many of the men in this border city of about 210,000, directly south of Nogales, Ariz., work in construction or other manual labor. Castro did, too. He started working on a “dompe,” or dump truck, when he was 14. Whenever work dried up, he would put his life in Mexico on hold, head to the U.S. for a job and then come home. He has been previously deported, but continued to return.

“I would go back and forth. I never tried to stay any longer,” he says. “My wife is here. I did not plan on abandoning her."

His wife, Ana Luisa Alarcon-Ramirez, is precise and articulate. It’s hot this morning, and she has pulled her long black hair into a twist. She finishes his sentences when he can’t find quite the right words, and she interrupts him to offer richer details about their life together. They are all sitting on the covered patio – Castro, his parents with their sad eyes, his fidgety children – as he tells his story.

Early on the morning of Nov. 16, 2010, Castro crossed into the U.S., illegally, he concedes without flinching, to get to Tucson for a landscaping job.

The hills north of the border are dusty and dense with trees and shrubs. Temperatures are disastrously hot in the summer, but on that fall day they dropped to a chilly low of 32F.

His group was traveling north, a mile or two past the border, when he spotted “muchos migra,” many Border Patrol agents. The travelers ran back down a hill they had climbed, toward the creek they had crossed and spread out. Castro says he imagined he would be safe, running back toward Mexico.

“We weren’t walking into the U.S. anymore, we were leaving. So we said, according to us, we were free,” he says.

“We all ran in different directions. Liliana, me and another guy ran ahead. Then Liliana went to the left, and the other guy went to the right, and I left towards the creek -- and it was me that the officer chased.”

Castro claims the officer called him names and started grabbing and pushing him.

“Take it easy officer, why are you hitting me? Why are you pushing me with the horse?” Castro says he asked. The officer allegedly continued to hit him with his horse and his reins.

“It was like when bees are all over you and you got them crazy. This is how he was hitting me,” Castro says.

Castro says he asked the officer to stop. The agent then said, “I’m going to shoot you,” Castro says. And when he cowered to protect himself, the officer allegedly shot him. When he gets to this part, Castro uses his cane as an extension of his arm, drawing on the cement where each man was standing – a few feet apart.

“And when I fell he was pointing at my head … and he told me ‘I am going to kill you, you son of a bitch. Don’t move. I am going to hit (shoot) you in the head,’ he told me.”

“His eyes looked like they were about to pop out, like if he was going to kill me. But at that moment I shouted ‘help’ and he turned and saw Liliana (a fellow traveler) on top of the hill. And, he said, ‘Oh, m*****f*****.’ ”

Castro says the officer asked him where he was injured and said he’d go get help.

He pressed a white T-shirt from his backpack against the wound from the .40 caliber bullet and waited.

When help arrived, by helicopter, other Border Patrol agents returned with the officer, who accused Castro of hitting him in the head with a rock, Castro says.

“I told him, ‘Which rock?’ Never did I grab any rock.”

A government lawyer declined to let Canales be interviewed, but in court documents the government argued that force was necessary again the rock-thrower.

“Agent Canales acted justifiably in self-defense to protect himself against plaintiff’s attempt to throw a large rock at him; moreover, plaintiff, who was suspected of committing the felony of illegal entry into the United States, was attempting to avoid arrest and Agent Canales was justified in using physical force to effect a lawful arrest and prevent escape.”

Investigative reports obtained by the Nogales International, the paper that first reported the incident, suggest Castro may have been a coyote. Risner denied that claim, saying his client was merely entering the U.S. to work.

At the hospital in Tucson, doctors operated on Castro to remove the bullet. Fragments had penetrated his spine, his discharge records state. He underwent two more surgeries and was discharged more than two weeks later.

That’s when the second ordeal began, he says. For days he says he was mistreated by officers. He said he was handcuffed to his wheelchair, denied prescribed painkillers, transported between prison and a hospital in a freezing car while still bleeding and not allowed to meet with the consular official who came to visit him.

“Then he handcuffed me again and I said, ‘Why do you handcuff me again if I can’t even walk, I can’t run.’ ‘No,’ he tells me, ‘it is safer this way.’ He shoved me into the patrol car handcuffed and all cut, bleeding,” he says.

In March 2011. a bus dropped Castro back in Mexico.

“They should pay for their mistake
Around lunch time, Castro swallows a fistful of pills.

One is for sleeping. Most are for pain – pain in the neck, pain in the back, pain along the spinal cord, deeper pain, shifting pain, pain where the bullet sliced through his side, grazed his spine and landed in his stomach.

He keeps his pills in a clear plastic shoebox. If he followed the prescriptions, he’d be taking 14 pills a day, he says, but he has been cutting back to save money. The pain is constant, and it will probably get worse over time, creeping like a vine along nerves in his back and down his legs.

Castro says he decided to sue to right a wrong.

“They should pay for their mistake,” he says. “They should compensate me for their error.”

In an interview in his Tucson office, walls decorated with a Mayan print and a vintage movie poster -- the 1949 Cold War propaganda classic “I married a Communist” -- Risner, Castro’s lawyer, explains his client’s goals.

“It’s about money,” he says. “That's it.”

Castro lost the ability to buy food for his family, send his kids to school. “He's been damaged economically,” Risner says.

“In addition, the Border Patrol could do a better job of checking their agents, training them better, actually do things to make them do a better job, where it's safer for the people they encounter. Those are possibilities. But, realistically it's just money.”

Castro tried working but almost crashed the dump truck. His has turned to his family for help. “One lends me money, then the other. That is how I go on,” he explains. He needs another operation that will cost 100,000 pesos, or around $8,000, he says.

His wife is now the family’s provider.

“He was in charge of everything and, well, now there is nothing,” she says. “I work, sell cakes, sell clothes in the flea market, clean houses, anything. I move around, bring things, take things up, get things down, everything, everything, everything.”

He used to see America as a place of opportunity, worth risks and sacrifices. Would he ever go back?

“No, not anymore. No more, for nothing. Americans do not like us. Even more so the officials (Border Patrol agents). The officials are racists who do not want us there.”

Tomorrow, we’ll walk you through what happens when a border agent fires a weapon and why prosecution is rare. With apprehensions down and deaths up, we’ll also tell you who is advocating for greater accountability.

--Spanish translation by Diana Crofts-Pelayo. 

Deadly Patrols is an investigative collaboration among nonprofit journalism organizations Investigative Newsource and KPBS, in San Diego, the Texas Observer in Austin, the PBS TV-Web newsmagazine Need to Know and The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. The project was coordinated by the Investigative News Network, a national membership organization of journalism nonprofits.