A sheriff's deputy was caught on camera tasing a migrant teen boy from Honduras at a shelter for migrant children in Texas. The horrifying video footage was captured on the Bexar County Sheriff's Deputy Patrick Divers' bodycam, which has now gone viral and created quite a few ripples.
The 16-year-old boy, who entered the United States a few days back and was put at a shelter home for children, was tased for 35 seconds and left in excruciating pain after he refused to follow the orders of the visiting police officers. This once again shows how migrant children are treated at shelter homes after they reach the US-Mexico border.
Animal Instinct
Although the incident happened almost a month back, the footage made its way to the social media only early this week. The disturbing bodycam footage shows a law enforcement official tasing an innocent 16-yearold after he refuses to listen to him.
The incident took place on May 12, when Bexar County Sheriff's Deputy Patrick Divers was responding to a call about a migrant boy who was refusing to go to class and was becoming unruly. When Divers arrived, the staff members briefed him about the boy and that he was becoming unmanageable and had broken two beds.
The boy had anger issues, Divers was briefed. "Well, obviously," he scoffed before entering the building.
According to the footage that was first obtained by Reveal News, Divers was led to the boy but he didn't ask many questions at that time. When he eventually reached the room, he find the child sitting in a bathroom and yelling in Spanish to the facility's staffers.
"If they're going to take me, let's just f**king get it over with," the child yelled over and over again, according to Divers' body camera footage.
Divers then can be heard speaking English to the boy, who speaks Spanish. After a seven-minute wait, Divers' partner, Deputy Harold Schneider, showed up.
"Ready? I'm going to tase this kid," Divers said in English. He ordered the teen in English to stand up and turn around. The child stood up; he was adjusting the drawstring on his pants when Divers shot him with his taser for about 35 seconds. The boy then yells in pain after which he is taken to custody.
Quite Disturbing
The disturbing bodycam footage reminds one of the April 2021 killing of Daunte Wright, who was shot dead by Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter, who mistook her pistol for a taser. However, that was completely unintentional but Divers knew what he was doing.
Ricardo Cisneros, the interim director of the Southwest Key Casa Blanca shelter in San Antonio, repeatedly gave the teen his word that the police wouldn't touch him or take him anywhere. But even they didn't expect Divers to take such a drastic step.
The boy was a refugee, an asylum seeker in the United States without his parents and in the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 2020, he had fled a gang that had beaten him and, his family says, threatened his life in Honduras.
By that afternoon in May 2020, the teen had already spent nine months bouncing around five refugee agency-sponsored shelters from California to Virginia and Texas. He had only been at this shelter for a week when the incident took place.
Interestingly, when Divers tased him, the child showed no signs of fighting back or resisting arrest. Divers then repeatedly pulsed the weapon on the child's torso and thighs. After the boy almost fell unconscious Divers picked him up. Schneider chose a nickname for the refugee child, who was screaming in pain and agony.
"El Stupido," he said.
The incident once again raises questions on the condition in which migrant children are kept and treated at the facilities. The Biden administration has been constantly defending that the facilities have been working fine and the children are safe but that doesn't seem to be. There have also been multiple allegations of child abuse and sexual harassment at the shelters for migrant children across Texas.
The Biden administration has vowed to take a compassionate approach to migrants and asylum seekers who are fleeing violence, poverty and persecution, but that may not be what is actually happening.
