The U.S. Supreme Court case Hernandez v. Mesa, 2019 involved a cross-border shooting incident where Jesus Mesa Jr., a U.S. Border Patrol agent, fatally shot Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, a Mexican national on the Mexican side of the border in 2010. The parents of the deceased teenager sued Agent Mesa for damages arguing that their son's constitutional rights were violated under Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In this case, however, it was ruled by the Supreme Court that federal agents who commit unconstitutional acts cannot be held liable for damages unless Congress has explicitly provided such remedy under law or if there is an established history of analogous liability which could justify recognizing such cause of action in this context. The court concluded that neither condition applied here as no explicit statutory provision allowed lawsuits against federal officers for violating constitutional rights nor did any historical practice exist allowing similar claims against them when acting abroad.

In the dissenting opinion for Hernandez v. Mesa, Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan disagreed with the majority's decision to deny a remedy to the family of Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca. The teenager was shot dead in Mexico by a U.S Border Patrol agent standing on American soil. They argued that this case should not be treated differently from other cases involving law enforcement officers who violate constitutional rights while acting within their official capacity just because it happened across an international border. They believed that there were no legal or practical barriers preventing them from applying existing laws against unreasonable use of deadly force in this situation and therefore held that Hernández’s parents should have been allowed to sue for damages under Bivens v Six Unknown Named Agents (1971). This would hold federal officials personally responsible for violating someone's constitutional rights.