Foreign Affairs

American 7-Year-Old Girl Fatally Shot By Mexican Police In Anti-Cartel Operation Near Border

U.S. Customs And Border Patrol/Creative Commons/Flickr

A 7-year-old American girl was fatally shot by Mexican police during an anti-cartel operation near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The girl, identified as Aranza, was shot in the head while traveling with her family in Matamoros, Mexico, as police pursued suspected members of the Gulf Cartel on Oct. 29, according to CBS News. Her family alleges officers opened fire despite her father’s attempts to identify them as civilians, while Mexican authorities maintain that police were responding to an attack during the operation, according to a Friday statement.

The Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C. did not immediately reply for comment.

The mother alleges that she was driving with her husband and five children near the border in the town of Matamoros when a police helicopter began following their car, CBS News reported. They stopped the car and the father jumped out to tell the police they were civilians with children, but the police still opened fire.

The officers who opened fire have not been detained but “significant progress is being made in the course of the investigation,” Jesus Govea, the Attorney General of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, claimed per the outlet.

There was a high police presence in the region due to the arrest of Cárdenas Rodríguez — who used the street name Axel — a cartel member guilty of homicides, kidnappings and extortion as well as trafficking drugs, weapons and people into the U.S.

Though cross-border cartel activity is pervasive, left-wing Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum refuses to allow an American military presence in Mexico and insists on limited intelligence sharing. When the U.S. deployed an additional 500 troops to the border in October, Sheinbaum voiced concerns about “Mexican sovereignty” per the Latin Times.