Ross D. Franklin / AP file

Raul Castro, former Arizona governor, attends an event in Phoenix on Jan. 3, 2011. The 96-year-old former U.S. diplomat was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint last week after a radiation detector was set off.

A 96-year-old former Arizona governor and former U.S. diplomat says he holds no grudges against the U.S. Border Patrol agents who he says detained him at a checkpoint for more than a half-hour in stifling heat after his pacemaker apparently set off a radiation sensor.

Raul H. Castro says although he wasn’t mistreated, agents could have been more sensitive to his age and condition.

“I feel they’ve got a job to do and I don’t condemn them for doing a job,” he told msnbc.com on Thursday, “but once I was identified and I was 96 years of age and told them I had medical treatment the day before, I expected a little more.”

A friend who was driving the former governor at the time wasn’t so forgiving. Anne Doan, who teaches as the University of Arizona, called the treatment of Castro “humiliating” and “absolutely ridiculous.”

“I was embarrassed as I watched the governor being needlessly treated like a nuclear threat, especially because they knew he had just had a treatment at Tucson Heart Hospital the day before,” Doan wrote in an opinion column in the Nogales International.” I felt he was being disrespected as a senior citizen, much less the amazing statesman that he is.”

The Border Patrol says Castro was “delayed” for only 10 minutes and that it “regrets any inconvenience” caused by the stop.

Castro was governor of Arizona from 1975-77 before serving as U.S. ambassador to Argentina from 1977-80 under President Jimmy Carter.  He was U.S. ambassador to El Salvador from 1964-68 and U.S. ambassador to Bolivia from 1968-69 under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

The checkpoint incident happened on June 12. Doan, the daughter of former Nogales, Ariz., Mayor Arthur Doan and a family friend of the Castros, was driving Raul Castro from his home in the border town of Nogales to a luncheon in Tucson, about 70 miles north, to celebrate his 96^th birthday.

Their car was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 19 near Tubac, Ariz., about 24 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, after triggering a radiation sensor. Castro had a medical procedure for his heart and pacemaker the day before and he believes that’s what set off the sensor.

Doan said an agent directed Castro to a tented area for a secondary inspection, with temperatures approaching triple digits.

Doan said she asked the agents if Castro, who was dressed in a suit, could sit in his air-conditioned car instead but agents said he could not and that they had a fan blowing in the tent.

“I explained that he was a former governor and ambassador, a true statesman, and that he was 96 years old and that he shouldn’t have to be going through this. They knew it was the medical procedure that was coming up on their radar,” Doan wrote.

 “At that point I was begging them to leave him alone.” 

“It was very hot. It was uncomfortable,” Castro recalled.

Doan said agents asked Castro a series of questions, brought out a document for him to sign and then ran a detection machine over his body again before telling him he was free to go.

“We were walking away in the sun (back to the car) and they ask him for his ID,” Doan told msnbc.com. “By then he’s flustered – not because of the incident, but because of the heat. He stumbles around and drops his ID. One of the agents offered to pick it up and the governor said ‘No, I’ll pick it up.’ By then I could tell he was upset.”

Doan continued: “They just kept humiliating him, I felt. They never asked me who I was. I was driving the car and they never asked me for my name, my ID.  Why they didn’t they ask me, if there was a nuclear threat in that car?”

Doan and Castro estimated they were held up for more than 30 minutes.

“When we were leaving he (Castro) said, ‘Well at least they didn’t send me to Cuba,’” Doan said. (The Mexican-born Castro is not related to the Cuban president of the same name.)

Asked about the incident, U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Arizona released the following statement:

“CBP detection equipment at the I-19 Border Patrol Checkpoint discovered a possible trace of radiation on Governor Castro. As required by policy, agents must identify and resolve all sources of radiation, regardless of the circumstances. In this instance, CBP agents were able to identify and resolve the source of the radiation reading. Gov. Castro was delayed for 10 minutes from 11:42 to 11:52 a.m. CBP regrets any inconvenience the delay may have caused.”

A Border Patrol spokesman declined further comment.

Castro didn’t make a big deal the incident but his wife, Patricia, was more critical.

“They’re doing their job, which we understand. Ordinarily we pass through there with no problem. But there’s a certain time when somebody’s that old and highly respected; in that state it seems to me they would have given some consideration to that,” she told msnbc.com.

Doan said agents could have been more accommodating and sensitive.

“They had a job to do and this 96-year-old gentleman was nobody even though he was former governor and former ambassador,” Doan told msnbc.com.

“In the desert heat you have to be sensitive to people who are ill or aged.”

Alessandra Soler, executive director of the American Civil Liberties of Arizona, told the Arizona Republic that agents should have used discretion instead of solely relying on a machine to detain Castro.

"I think most people would agree that subjecting a 96-year-old man to secondary screening does little to secure our borders and a man who had just informed them that he had undergone this medical procedure," she told the newspaper.

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Two Border Patrol agents have been put on paid leave after audience members complained they engaged in a sex act while attending a Cirque du Soleil theater performance in San Diego County.

Kallie Helwig, 24, and Gerald Torello, 35, were in the audience watching the show under a circus tent at the Del Mar Fairgrounds on March 27. They were off-duty at the time and were not in uniform, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.

Spectators told sheriff’s deputies they saw the two touching each other inappropriately.

“According to the reporting party, they believed that the two folks, the suspects, were engaging in inappropriate behavior while sitting in stands with families around them,” sheriff’s Lt. Kenn Nelson told msnbc.com.

One witness told NBCSanDiego.com that the pair appeared to be engaging in oral sex. The witness, who asked not to be named, said she told the two to stop but they didn’t. She said two children turned around and also saw the couple in the compromising position. The male agent gave one of the children a high-five as this was happening, the witness said.

The couple eventually stopped when an usher approached, the witness said.

After the performance, as the crowd was exiting, Helwig allegedly punched one of the complaining patrons in the face, Nelson said.

"My vision went black, and that was the last thing I felt," the patron told NBC San Diego.

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Sheriff’s deputies arrived. Helwig was cited for misdemeanor battery. Torello was taken to the sheriff's substation in Encinitas, cited for public intoxication and released.

“This is not an everyday call,” Nelson said.

“This call was handled exactly as it would have been with any other citizen. The fact that these folks were with the Border Patrol had no influence on how the call was handled.”

The Customs and Border Patrol released the following statement about the incident:

“All Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner while on or off duty. CBP stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission, and the overwhelming majority of CBP employees and officers perform their duties with honor and distinction, working tirelessly every day to keep our country safe. CBP takes every allegation of misconduct seriously and fully cooperates in the investigation of such allegations. Presently, the two employees in question have been assigned administrative duties.”

Both agents have been with the Customs and Border Patrol since 2008.

Helwig and Torello could not immediately be reached by telephone for comment on Tuesday.

Msnbc.com's James Eng and NBCSanDiego.com contributed to this report.

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AP file

Friends and relatives of Sergio Hernandez Guereca, 15, carry his coffin before his burial in the northern border city of Juarez, Mexico, June 10, 2010.

The federal government will not pursue charges against a U.S. border patrol agent who shot and killed a 15-year-old Mexican national two years ago, the Justice Department said on Friday.

The shooting of Sergio Hernandez Guereca took place in a spillway of the Rio Grande along the border on June 7, 2010, as the agent was dodging rocks thrown at him while he was trying to detain a suspected smuggler.

The death of Hernandez Guereca, who was on the Mexico side of the border when he was shot, sparked protest from rights groups and the family filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government.

The Mexican government condemned the shooting and called for a swift response. Mexican President Felipe Calderon called on Washington "to investigate fully what happened and punish those responsible."

Investigators say they interviewed more than 25 witnesses, analyzed videos, listened to 911 recordings and law enforcement radio traffic, reviewed border patrol agent training and use-of-force materials, and reviewed the officer's history.

'Reasonable use of force'
They concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the Customs and Border Patrol agent for homicide. The agent has never been identified.

Instead, a Justice Department statement says, what they found indicated "that the agent's actions constituted a reasonable use of force or would constitute an act of self-defense in response to the threat created by a group of smugglers hurling rocks at the agent and his detainee."

They also lacked evidence to prove that "the CBP agent acted willfully and with the deliberate and specific intent to do something the law forbids," which would be required to prove a civil rights violation. The Justice Department said that an "accident, mistake, misperception, negligence and bad judgment are not sufficient to establish a federal criminal civil rights violation."

"The U.S. government regrets the loss of life in this matter," the Justice Department said.

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U.S. Border Patrol agents and Mexican drug traffickers fought a gun battle across the Rio Grande in south Texas, authorities said Friday, the latest of a spate of cross-border shootings.

The Border Patrol said gunfire erupted Wednesday after agents confronted smugglers loading bundles of marijuana into two vehicles on the banks of the Rio Grande west of Roma, Texas, a town about 250 miles south of San Antonio.

The agents opened fire after smugglers fleeing in a vehicle attempted to run them over, the Border Patrol said. Armed traffickers on the Mexican side of the river then shot at the agents, who returned fire into Mexico, the Border Patrol said.

"Our agents had a posed threat," Rosalinda Huey, a spokeswoman with the Border Patrol's Rio Grande sector told Reuters. "They're trained to deal with that situation," she added.

No agents were injured by the gunfire and it is unclear whether any smugglers in Mexico were struck by bullets, she said.

Agents subsequently recovered nearly two tons of marijuana, with a value of more than $3 million. No arrests were made.

The shooting came during one of three raids in the area Wednesday, said NBC Station KZTV.

One investigation in nearby Rio Grande City resulted in the seizure of 2,800 pounds of marijuana worth about $2.2 million when agents followed footprints to the entrance of an underground storage bunker, KZTV said. In another incident Wednesday, agents checking a vehicle driving without headlights ended at a home near Rio Grande City where agents saw several people flee. Three suspects were nabbed and agents found 1,400 pounds, or $1.1 million worth, of marijuana in an underground bunker, KZTV said.

Huey said traffickers opening fire on agents was "just another tactic" as they sought to move drugs across the U.S. border, where additional agents, equipment and infrastructure have contributed to tightening security in recent years.

"Obviously, they've gotten more desperate," she said. "They're going to use more tactics to avoid apprehension or seizure of their narcotics."

The same stretch of the Rio Grande -- Rio Bravo in Mexico -- recorded one other shooting incident involving Border Patrol agents since October 2011, Huey said. No injuries were reported.

Last year agents engaged in gunfire with suspected drug runners near the south Texas town of Abram, according to news reports. In a separate incident, a West Texas road crew in Hudspeth County, east of El Paso, also came under fire from Mexico. And in September 2010, U.S. citizen David Hartley was fatally shot while riding a personal watercraft on Falcon Lake, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border.

This article includes reporting by Reuters.

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Slain U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry

The parents of a slain U.S. Border Patrol agent are seeking $25 million from the federal agency that ran Operation Fast and Furious, a gun-smuggling probe that is under investigation in Congress.

Josephine and Kent Terry on Wednesday filed a claim alleging the death of agent Brian Terry was due to negligence by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to The Arizona Daily Star newspaper of Tucson.

The 65-page claim, a legal prerequisite to a lawsuit, blames bureau negligence for allowing weapons in Operation Fast and Furious to illegally cross the border, leading to Terry's death on Dec. 14, 2010, the Daily Star said. On that day, Terry and three other border patrol agents were patrolling south of Tucson. They came across armed men, and a gunfight ensued, killing Terry.

In Operation Fast and Furious, begun in 2009, agents lost track of about 1,400 weapons that they were tracking. The guns were sold to low-level straw purchasers believed to be supplying Mexican drug gangs and other criminals. Another 700 firearms connected to suspects in the investigation have been recovered, some from crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S., including the scene in Nogales, Ariz., where Terry was killed.

The first so-called gun-walking probe was launched in 2006 and was known as Operation Wide Receiver. Other smaller, similar operations in which ATF agents monitored gun purchases were conducted in 2007 and 2008. 

"Brian's death could have and should have been prevented by competent law enforcement personnel if those involved had simply followed ATF policy and common sense," read the claim, according to the Daily Star.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department rejected an assertion by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that top agency officials are covering up events surrounding Fast and Furious.

Issa made the accusation in a letter threatening to seek a contempt of Congress ruling against Attorney General Eric Holder for failing to turn over congressionally subpoenaed documents that were created after problems with Fast and Furious came to light. Holder was to testify Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Issa chairs.

The Washington Post late Wednesday, citing the Justice Department, reported Holder was expected to testfiy that the gun-walking tactic used in Fast and Furious was "wholly unacceptable," used in a misguided way, and would not be used again.    

Deputy Attorney General James Cole, The Associate Press reported, responded to Issa's letter that the department will provide material created after Feb. 4, 2011, the day the department gave incorrect information to Congress about Fast and Furious. At the time, the department said federal agents made every effort to intercept illegally purchased weapons. Instead, agents in the Phoenix-based Fast and Furious investigation tried to track the weapons after purchase to make cases against gun-smuggling ring leaders who had long escaped prosecution.

A committee spokesman, Frederick Hill, said the department is under investigation not only for Fast and Furious but also for its response to whistleblowers and investigators who expressed concern about the operation.

"If the Justice Department cannot provide assurances that it will meet its legal obligations" and provide the documents, "the committee has no other option than moving to hold Attorney General Holder in contempt," Hill said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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