Immigrant children reported border agents verbally, physically abused them

A 15-year-old reported being punched in the face by a Border Patrol agent. A 9-year-old said she was separated from her mother and not permitted to say goodbye. A CBP official allegedly brandished a pistol before a 14-year-old, threatening to shoot unless the child remained silent.

The scenes are among hundreds of accounts of abuse and mistreatment described in a new report, based on interviews with unaccompanied immigrant children who were apprehended by border agents in Arizona between January 2023 and March 2024.

The September report, from Arizona nonprofit legal advocacy group Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, said that during intake interviews with 314 children between the ages of 5 and 17, detained kids reported inhumane treatment, including physical and verbal abuse, family separations, extended detention times and lack of medical care while in Border Patrol custody.

The Florence Project is the only nonprofit legal service provider in Arizona that provides pro-bono legal and social services to detained children.

After children are apprehended at the border, they’re supposed to be held in Customs and Border Protection custody for no longer than 72 hours before they’re transferred to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities, known as ORR shelters, said Yesenia Ramales, senior legal assistant at the Florence Project.

But the Florence Project has regularly documented violations of that requirement. The latest report includes an account from a 15-year-old girl who told advocates she was detained for two weeks in what she called a “cage;” a 12-year-old described being held for five days in a cold room; and multiple children who said they were held for longer than 72 hours with insufficient food.

CBP holding centers are not designed for children, the report said.

“The excessive time spent in inappropriate custodial settings facilitates abuse and is detrimental to children’s psychological and emotional wellbeing,” the report said.

The Florence Project’s intake interviews take place once children have already been transferred to the ORR shelters, where Florence Project advocacy team members routinely meet with detained minors to explain their rights and what to expect with their immigration cases, as well as to inquire about their well-being and experiences in custody.

“We’re not asking for palaces for these kids. We’re asking for basic human rights,” Ramales said. The report shows a need for greater accountability and training for agents who appear ill-equipped to deal with vulnerable children, she said.

Neither the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP and the Border Patrol, nor CBP responded to the Star’s Sept. 24 request for comment on the report.

Nearly four in 10 children interviewed reported experiencing verbal abuse, and one in 10 reported physical abuse, and many who didn’t personally experience physical abuse said they witnessed violence against others, the report said.

The report quotes a boy who told legal advocates: “The officer was grabbing kids and throwing them to the ground and punching them. The same officer was grabbing people by the shirt collar and yanked them towards him. The worst moment was when the officer pushed an adult man on the back of his head, and he hit the ground.”

The alleged treatment violates the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and the Flores settlement agreement, which since 1997 has provided court oversight of how the government cares for migrant children in its custody, the report says.

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The Florence Project has filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, demanding an investigation into the complaints in the reports and policy reforms. A similar complaint the group filed in 2022, as well as hundreds of individual complaints from children over the years, resulted in no meaningful investigation, the report said.

“These abuses and harmful conditions continue despite hundreds of complaints filed over the years with oversight agencies that are charged with investigating detention conditions and individual misconduct,” the report said. “The fact that these patterns of abuse and mistreatment continue unabated gives rise to grave concerns over the lack of accountability and oversight within Border Patrol.”

The report offers five recommendations, including to sanction or reform CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility and DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties for failure to address “systemic” mistreatment of unaccompanied children; hire child welfare professionals to ensure appropriate care and maintain children’s family unity; and increase individual accountability by requiring each agent who interacts with a child to report their name and location on the child’s documentation.

Many children reported that they told border agents about injuries and were ignored. The report describes a 13-year-old with a large cut on the knee that was bleeding “profusely” to the point where the child felt faint. No one provided medical attention or supplies to clean the wound, despite the “obvious and grievous” injury, the report said.

The report quotes Florence Project legal assistant Camille Auer describing her alarm, in March 2024, at hearing about a “higher level of violence from what I had heard before” in intake interviews.

“Children said that agents picked up kids by their shirts and threw them on the ground, children were handcuffed and pushed, a child witnessed an adult being thrown into the barbed wire,” she said. “Border Patrol agents are leveraging their position of power to intimidate children and physically harm them. Often children describe these abuses as ‘the norm.’ They are generally afraid to speak out against these agents due to the egregious treatment they experienced.”

When Florence Project advocates hear accounts of abuse, they offer children the chance to file a formal complaint, but many decline out of fear of hurting their immigration case, Ramales said. Others have internalized the idea that, “We’re immigrants, we deserve to be treated like this,” Ramales said.

Some children agree to file reports, but often anonymously. DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties says that means there’s no way to follow up on them, she said.

“We believe recording the data is still important,” she said.

ORR shelters have also been the site of alleged sexual abuse of immigrant minors at Southwest Key facilities, the largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children in the U.S., underscoring the critical need for improved oversight and accountability at all stages when children are in federal custody, advocates say.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in July alleging Southwest Key employees have repeatedly sexually abused and harassed children in their care over the past eight years.

A Southwest Key spokesperson said at the time the complaint “does not present the accurate picture of the care and commitment our employees provide to the youth and children.”

Ramales recalls interviewing children who were scared, crying and reported having nightmares, she said. Many arrive at the border already traumatized by experiences in their home country or on their journey to the border, she said.

On top of it, “they have lasting trauma from things that have happened to them from that short time in CBP custody,” she said. “That’s just setting them up to expect horrible treatment wherever they go.”