Border security plan worries Texas town

Sunday, May 14, 2006 · Last updated 12:13 a.m. PT

Border security plan worries Texas town

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

REDFORD, Texas -- The last time the U.S. military posted troops on the border
near this tiny cluster of farms and ranches, an 18-year-old goat herder was shot
to death.

Hardly a day passes that Esequiel Hernandez Jr.'s family and neighbors don't think
of May 20, 1997, the day a Marine corporal shot and killed him.

With President Bush considering plans to deploy National Guard troops along the
Mexican border, Hernandez's family is worried that other border residents or even
his nephews, who tend goats along the same rugged West Texas desert where he was killed,
could be the next victims.

The last time area residents saw the military working on the border in their Big Bend
region town, the Marines assigned to an anti-drug mission were explaining what led
to Esequiel Hernandez's death.