Report: Abuses at the U.S.- Mexico Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights

The Guardian (United Kingdom) highlights a new report (Abuses at the U.S.- Mexico Border: How to Address Failures and Protect Rights) documenting human rights abuses at the US-Mexico border by U,S. Customs and Border Protection officers.  The Washington Office on Latin America  and the Kino Border Initiative authored the report, which details a pattern of misuse of lethal force, intimidation, sexual harassment and falsifying documents.  It notes that: “The lack of accountability is so widespread that it helps cement in place a culture that enables human rights violations. The abuses keep coming because impunity is so likely.”

Here are a few nuggets from the Executive Summary of the report:

• • “Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal government’s largest civilian law enforcement agency, has a persistent problem of human rights abuse without accountability. Many, if not most, CBP officers, and agents in CBP’s Border Patrol agency are professionals who seek to follow best practices. However, the frequency and severity of abuse allegations indicate that a substantial number of officers and agents don’t meet that standard. Further, the record suggests that existing investigations are flawed and incomplete, while disciplinary procedures are not credible enough to change their behavior.

• • This report gives numerous examples of alleged abuse, as well as insubordinate or politicized behavior since 2020. Some of the cases are severe, involving misuse of force or even loss of life. Many other examples of cruelty and victimization take place on a daily basis, such as unprovoked violence during arrests, abusive language, denial of food or medical attention, family separations, non-return of documents and valuables, dangerous deportations, racial profiling, and falsifying migration paperwork. The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) keeps a regularly updated database documenting these abuses.

• • The investigations of many of these allegations would not take place without the work of outside actors like human rights defenders, journalists, whistleblowers and the victims themselves. Investigations can begin in two ways. Some—often, the most serious cases—start at U.S. government investigators’ own initiative, especially if the site of the abuse is a crime scene. Many others require outside actors to take the first step. Without their initiative, most such cases would never be investigated at all—and, as this report shows, many still don’t get investigated.

• • For a victim or advocate seeking to make a complaint and achieve redress, the accountability process is bewildering, opaque, and slow-moving. Right now, outside efforts to gain accountability for abuse must go through a convoluted system that has been cobbled together in the 20 years since the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) founding. Four agencies with overlapping responsibilities handle complaints and pass cases between each other. All suffer from personnel and other capacity shortfalls, and some have insufficient power to make their recommendations stick.

• • There are several frequent “failure points” where cases commonly lead nowhere,” leaving victims without justice and harming the credibility of the DHS accountability process. In its accompaniment of migrant victims who come from CBP custody to its shelter in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) often sees complaints go nowhere. Cases get entered into a database without further action. They get closed because of ongoing litigation, even about general topics, or because “policy was not violated.” Cases get forwarded to other agencies, then nothing happens. Sometimes, there is no response at all. This report’s second section documents painful examples of abuses suffered and what this inability to get past “failure points” looks like, including to victims—some of whom are deported without ever speaking to an investigator.”

Thanks to Professor Lenni Benson for sharing the Guardian story on the report on the ImmProf listserve.  Few U.S. news outlets seem to have picked up on the report.  That is a shame but unfortunately abuses by border enforcement officers may not be news.

KJ