Debbie Nathan

Note: please also see a follow up article, based on reporting I did for The Nation in March, a month after the piece below was written. Click here.

Who’s the bad guy: Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera or Nicholas Corbett? The first was a young Mexican man and four-year resident of California who was killed last year by Corbett, a Border Patrol agent. Today in Tucson (see link), Corbett goes on trial, accused of murdering Dominguez Rivera when he was crossing from Mexico into Arizona early last year. Dominguez Rivera had gone home to Mexico in late 2006 to

Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera

visit his family. He was killed while making his return trip to the New York City area* in January 2007. He was undocumented, hence the desert crossing through Arizona when Corbett apprehended and shot him.

The trial is starting today, and I’m waiting for the press to get into the background of both these guys. Especially Dominguez Rivera’s. Because he had a “Vida Loca” tattoo on his hand, there’s lots of loose talk that he was a gang member or some such scuzz.

Is that likely?

I visited Dominguez Rivera’s family in Mexico last year right after he was killed. I spoke with friends and neighbors. I poked

Nicholas Corbett

around his bedroom and examined things like the DVD’s he liked to watch. The only impression I got was that he was a really nice kid. I took some pictures and wrote a photo essay for the Tucson Weekly. Click here to see it.

Word is that Dominguez Rivera’s parents, Laura and Renato, are in Arizona for the trial. I urge the press to go to talk to them, and also to visit his neighborhood in Cuautla, Morelos, to speak with neighbors. He had a girlfriend in the US, too. Go find her. And Dominguez Rivera’s New York City-area neighbors, too.

Do the same for Corbett, who is from suburban Philadelphia and didn’t join the Border Patrol until he was almost too old for the age cutoff (35). What was he doing before? Who was he when he joined? And afterward?

Humanize both these men for your readers and watchers and listeners. This immigration issue is so huge and deep that we need more than trials to explain it.

Francisco’s baby pictures

*My Tucson Weekly article has Francisco traveling to and living in California. One of his parents told me that. The other said he was in Stamford, CT, near New York. It turns out I erroneously went with California in the Weekly piece — trial testimony places him in Stamford, working at a cereal factory. His dad also told me he was at a cereal factory.

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