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Video Shows CBP Agents Telling Mexican Teen to Drink Liquid Meth, Killing Him

HeadlineJul 31, 2017

Back in the United States, newly released video shows U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents telling 16-year-old Mexican teenager Cruz Velazquez Acevedo to drink from a bottle of liquid methamphetamine at a border checkpoint in San Diego, causing him to die from an acute drug overdose. In 2013, the teenager was crossing from Tijuana to California with two bottles of what he claimed was apple juice. The newly released video shows the border agents, who suspected the liquid was liquid meth, then repeatedly encouraged him to drink from it, to prove he wasn’t lying. Minutes after the teenager sipped on the liquid, his body began convulsing, and he began screaming “Mi corazón”—or, “My heart!” He died two hours later. The officers have not been disciplined. The U.S. has paid Acevedo’s family $1 million in a wrongful death lawsuit.

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