What bothers me is that too many have decided that a soldier, on leave from duty, driving on a highway near a border cannot possibly have any legitimate reason for crossing the border.
We have no facts to go on other than those which were provided in the article: his desire to cross the border for breakfast.
To some, without contrary evidence, this was sufficient. To others, it is clearly a rouse to cover his ulterior motives, speculated to be drugs, prostitution or some other crime.
We've seen discussion on factors such as race, sexual orientation, etc., all justified by claiming that by observing behavior, any such characteristic can be "put in context" and become "profiling" rather than stereotyping. I'm not trying to argue that profiling isn't useful or appropriate when utilized by educated practitioners (although too often I doubt the ability of the practitioner to do so), but the fact remains that we have no evidence about his behavior.
We return to the fact that a Hispanic soldier, driving on I-10 from Texas to California to see his mother on her birthday, with a firearm in the car, claims to have made a mistake while driving which resulted in him driving into Mexico and made a u-turn. The Mexican police questioned him, found the firearm and arrested him. Despite there being no evidence of any other crime there has been wild speculation that he was likely going to commit a crime. Perhaps it's only me, but this is too much.
Why doesn't this man deserve the benefit of the doubt?
What about this man makes him deserving of our skepticism rather than thanks for serving our country?
What is it about crossing the border that makes one guilty of a crime, rather than simple curiosity about the region or tourism?
We don't know, because again, we can't claim that his "behavior" that day gives us any insight. We can however, make claims that if we saw him, we would have known since he was sweating more than a normal person would in a dry desert that he was up to no good and deserves to be thrown in a Mexican jail for possessing a handgun legally in Texas and "accidentally" crossing into Mexico.