ANOTHER BORDER SHOOTING DISPUTED

Paralyzed Illegal Immigrant, 18, Is Seeking $25 Million From U.S.

SAN ANTONIO -- Abecnego Monje, an illegal immigrant carrying only a
jug of water, was crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time.

Wilbur Honeycutt, a local law enforcement officer participating in a
federal Drug Enforcement Agency program, was in his first year of
patrolling the border.

On Jan. 25, a cool winter evening, their worlds collided. Honeycutt
ran into illegal immigrants who had crossed the Rio Grande by inner
tube about 15 miles up-river from the border town of Eagle Pass. He
yelled for them to stop, officials say, but they fled.

Thinking he saw the flash of a gun, authorities say, Honeycutt
fired.

Monje says he heard four shots. One struck him in the back. Paralyzed
from the waist down, the 18-year-old is confined to a wheelchair in a
San Antonio rehabilitation clinic. Doctors doubt he will walk again.

"He wanted to work to make money so that he could go back to Mexico,"
said his sister Eneyda, who helped explain his situation because
Abecnego could not recount his misfortune without becoming physically
ill.

Eneyda said their family has a one-room home in rural Michoacan,
Mexico, and a few farm animals. "We only plant corn when it rains,"
she said.

The tragedy involving her brother is one of a string of law
enforcement shootings of illegal immigrants along the increasingly
tense 2,000-mile border.

Last September alone, the U.S. Border Patrol was involved in four
shootings of illegal immigrants in San Diego, two of them fatal.

A Border Patrol agent in Arizona killed an illegal immigrant in
September, and last month an agent near Eagle Pass wounded an illegal
immigrant who authorities say was brandishing a rifle.

In most of these cases, law enforcement personnel were threatened with
rocks or guns, authorities say.

Honeycutt appears never to have been in serious danger.

"I assure you," said Jose Luis Suarez, the Mexican consul in Eagle
Pass, "they were crossing without drugs or weapons. With regard to the
DEA officer, he had no reason for shooting a Mexican national,
certainly not in the back."

The Mexican government has filed a formal protest with the United
States and steered Monje to a San Antonio lawyer who contends that the
youth's civil rights were violated.

The lawyer, Sean Lyons, has filed a $25 million claim with the Drug
Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department. If the two
sides fail to reach an agreement, Lyons may file a lawsuit on Monje's
behalf.

Even the claim has generated controversy, since Monje was in the
United States illegally.

Last month the San Antonio television station KMOL asked viewers to
call in their opinions on whether a person should be allowed to sue
the government if he is hurt crossing the border illegally.
Ninety-five percent said no.

Although authorities concede that preliminary information indicates
that Honeycutt was not threatened, the FBI, the Maverick County
Sheriff's Department and the Texas Rangers are still investigating.
The DEA has declined comment.

Enrique Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Maverick County Sheriff's
Department, said Honeycutt was checking sensors near the river when he
came across the illegal immigrants. Monje said there were about 30.
Mexican Consul Suarez said the number was not even half that.

After Honeycutt fired at what he said looked like a gun flash, he
captured an illegal immigrant who had fallen in a canal, Rodriguez
said.

He walked the immigrant to a nearby ranch house, then called over law
enforcement personnel, according to Rodriguez.

Honeycutt then returned to the scene of the shooting, where he found
Monje, Rodriguez said.

Lyons, the attorney, said the man who found Monje covered him with a
jacket and cried, but Lyons said he does not know whether this was
Honeycutt. Lyons said Monje told the man not to worry, promising him
that he would recover.

Among questions the public has yet to have answered is whether
Honeycutt was on duty at the time of the shooting. He lives on a
rancher's property not far from the scene.

Honeycutt has expressed "grief" and a "heavy heart" about what
happened.

But he has also spoken of an "invasion" in Maverick County. The area
is the scene of such heavy trafficking in illegal immigrants and drugs
that some ranchers have begun carrying assault weapons. Some also have
resorted to rounding up trespassers on their own.

Some local officials even speculate that Honeycutt lives rent free in
return for helping local ranchers clamp down on the border, a claim
dismissed by his landlord, Dob Cunningham. The shooting incident
occurred just up river from Cunningham's property.

"It's an unfortunate incident," said Honeycutt. "But this is a
dangerous world down here. Sometimes things happen that are beyond our
control."

Honeycutt has not been suspended, as is sometimes the case when law
enforcement personnel are being investigated in shootings, but he is
believed to have been reassigned to a desk job with the local DEA office.

In some ways, the Monje shooting recalls that of Esequiel Hernandez,
the West Texas youth who was mistakenly killed by a Marine anti-drug
squad almost two years ago while herding his family's goats.

Like the Marines, the 40-year-old Honeycutt had had little experience
on the border. The Eagle Pass district attorney hired the former
part-time policeman last year to participate in the DEA task force
under a federal program that distributes money locally to fight drugs
in heavily trafficked areas.

"Improper training is precisely why we have this kind of problem,"
said Lisa Navarrete, deputy vice president for the National Council of
La Raza, a Washington-based Latino advocacy group. "Yes this is law
enforcement, but along the border it's a different kind."

Before going to the border, Honeycutt was an officer in the Hill
Country town of Bandera. He was laid off in 1997 while recuperating
from a back injury suffered when a wayward bull charged him while he
was on duty.

In a lawsuit that Honeycutt filed against the bull's owner, a San
Antonio psychologist described him in March 1997 as depressed, angry
and resentful. Honeycutt's emotions "appear to affect his functioning
and feelings of self-esteem and confidence in virtually all areas of
his daily life," wrote the psychologist, Jack Ferrell.

"It is my opinion that he will require substantial therapeutic care on
an out-patient basis and may require intermittent in-patient care if
his overall status does not improve," Ferrell wrote.

Robert Serna, the Eagle Pass district attorney who hired Honeycutt,
declined comment. Although Honeycutt was hired by the district
attorney's office, he reports to the local DEA office, which organized
the task force under a program that distributes money to what are
called High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas.

The program, a well-established anti-narcotics effort that includes 14
South Texas counties, is administered by the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy.

"They were sloppy in their build-up of law enforcement along the
border," said Lyons, Monje's attorney. "Wilbur Honeycutt is an example
of someone who shouldn't be there."