This article was jointly published with Puente News Collaborative in collaboration with KTEP News. Puente News Collaborative is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reporting, organizing and funding quality, rigorous news stories focused on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Border Patrol showed up at the door of a quiet house one fall morning, just after dawn, looking for undocumented immigrants. They said they had been watching the house for several days.
But instead of making arrests, an officer shot and killed the family dog.
More than two months later, the homeowner, a 26-year-old man, is still waiting for answers and demanding accountability for the death of his beloved seven-year-old Rottweiler, who was shot and killed Sept. 9 in his home in the Upper Valley, a leafy residential area of El Paso.
The owner does not wish his name to be used for privacy reasons. His lawyer points out that the man cooperated when officers arrived and told him they were investigating a tip regarding “foreign trafficking at the house,” which the owner denied.
“He told the officers they could come in,” said Marisa Ong, the family’s lawyer with the national law firm Singleton Schreiber. But first, according to Ong, the owner told them he was going to put his dog Chop in a bathroom. He also told officers where his dog was.
Although Chop had been placed in the bathroom by his owner, the dog was taken out by a Border Patrol agent who shot him from a distance of about 18 feet, the attorney told KTEP News.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed in a statement that on September 9, “a US Border Patrol agent was involved in a use-of-force incident in El Paso, Texas… The incident involved a dog.”
The use of force is currently under review by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility, in accordance with agency policies, according to the statement, which says in part, “CBP takes these incidents seriously.”
The death of Chop the dog shows that not only immigrants and children are affected, but also pets, caught up in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement crusade in cities across the country, from Los Angeles and Chicago to San Antonio and Charlotte.
The incident sparked a national backlash on social media, filled with videos of officers sedating people on the street, breaking car windows and arresting immigrants at businesses, and even inside a home in Charlotte while the people inside were putting up lights on a Christmas tree. The scenes have become sadly common as the Trump administration attempts to carry out mass deportations. According to CBP data, incidents involving the use of force by federal agents increased this summer, but then began to decline.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, sent a letter to the CBP commissioner and the Border Patrol chief on Nov. 18 requesting an update on the investigation into the deadly use of force at the El Paso home.
“This accident is unforgivable,” Escobar wrote. “A family lost their beloved dog due to the actions of a Border Patrol agent, and we still don’t know what the agency is doing, if anything, to remedy the situation or prevent something like this from happening again.”
The incident in El Paso’s pristine Upper Valley neighborhood began when officers knocked on the man’s door. The homeowner cooperated and told them they could enter the home after Chop was confined. “He showed them exactly the bathroom he was in. And he told them if they wanted to search that bathroom, to let him know and he would move Chop,” the attorney said.
The officers asked the owner to come out. He agreed and went to his truck, parked in the driveway, to identify himself. Just then he heard a shot, the lawyer said. When the man ran back home, officers tried to detain him, according to Ong.
“He saw the officer who had come into the house. He had his gun drawn. He pointed the gun at my client. And then he saw his dog Chop lying on the floor, moaning in pain,” Ong said. Chop bled to death.
By all accounts, the Rottweiler was an “extremely friendly” dog, Ong said.
The Border Patrol found no evidence of illegal activity at the home.
The attorney notes that the family is cooperating fully with the investigation by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility while awaiting answers.
Among their questions: Why did the Border Patrol agent enter the house alone?
“It is totally against protocol for an officer to enter a house alone,” says Ong, a former prosecutor who previously worked for the federal government. “It creates a safety risk for the officer. It creates a risk for anyone who’s there,” he adds.
Additionally, the family wants to know why the officer opened the bathroom door after the homeowner said Chop was inside. And there are also questions about when the officer fired his weapon. “The bullet hole where Chop was shot is about 18 feet from the bathroom,” Ong says.
“If Chop had attacked the officer in any way or been aggressive, you understand the officer would have shot him right there in the bathroom,” he adds, noting that the owner never even heard Chop bark.
Ong filed a Form SF-95 on behalf of his client to make a claim for damages, injury or death caused by a federal employee. Additionally, the family wants the El Paso District Attorney’s Office to prosecute animal cruelty charges. The prosecutor’s office said it does not comment on pending cases.
Since Chop’s death, according to Ong, the young owner has no longer been able to set foot in the house he was renovating with his father. “He’s extremely upset. Chop was his best friend,” she says. “We just hope there is transparency about what happened and accountability so this never happens to another family again.”
