Three men who were on the scene when a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 20-year-old Guatemalan woman near the US–Mexico border in May are expected to be deported soon, a representative of their government has told BuzzFeed News.

Guatemalan General Consul Tekandi Paniagua said the men, ages 18, 19, and 21, have told US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI that they want to return to Guatemala and are expected to drop their efforts to stay in the United States at an immigration hearing set for Monday.

Two of the men have told authorities that they did not see the shooting, Paniagua said, but the consulate described the third as a possible eyewitness.

Paniagua declined to go into specifics, citing ongoing investigations, but he said all three men's statements contradict the Border Patrol's initial version that the still unnamed agent shot Claudia Patricia Gómez González only after he was attacked by the undocumented migrants he was pursuing. The FBI and the Texas Rangers, the two agencies investigating the shooting, have yet to provide an official version of what took place.


Apart from the unnamed Border Patrol agent who fired the shot that killed Gómez González, the three men are the only known material witnesses in the shooting, and it is unclear how their absence from the United States would affect the investigation, especially if their statements turn out to be the only ones contradicting the Border Patrol's claim that the agent had fired his weapon in self-defense.

Michael Wu, an officer with the Webb County District Attorney’s Office who executed a search warrant for the lot where the shooting took place, was told by an FBI agent at the scene that the agent who shot Gómez González had been attacked with a stick and fired the bullet in self-defense, according to the warrant.



Gómez González had traveled 15 days through Mexico from her home in Guatemala before being fatally shot May 23 in Rio Bravo, Texas, shortly after crossing into the US.



The shooting garnered national attention because of cellphone footage of its immediate aftermath and the conflicting statements from US Customs and Border Protection about the events that led to the shooting.

A statement from CBP said the agent, a 15-year veteran of the Border Patrol, had been “allegedly assaulted” and “rushed" by a group of migrants who had entered the United States illegally.



“According to the agent, the group ignored his verbal commands [to get on the ground] and instead rushed him,” the statement read.

