Legislation aims to enforce CBP guidance on migrants' belongings

Newly proposed federal legislation takes aim at the long-standing issue of border agents inappropriately confiscating or failing to return migrants’ personal belongings, such as identifying or legal documents, money, prescription medications and religious items.

Five members of Congress, including Arizona Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva, last week introduced the “CBP Guidance on Personal Belongings Act,” which would require U.S. Customs and Border Protection to develop and maintain guidance for “the respectful handling” of migrants’ belongings.

The bill would also create a monitoring mechanism to ensure agents on the ground are complying with CBP’s directive.

“For years, we’ve seen the devastating impact of CBP’s confiscation and destruction of migrants’ personal belongings,” Grijalva said in a Nov. 22 statement. The new legislation would “provide the necessary safeguards to protect migrants’ rights by ensuring clear standards and oversight are enshrined into law to prevent this unjust practice from continuing.”

The legislation directs CBP to develop guidance defining “essential” personal property — including, at a minimum, religious items, contact information of family members and loved ones, and essential medical property that doesn’t pose a threat or hazard — that should remain in migrants’ possession, or stored by CBP and returned, “to the greatest extent operationally feasible.”

It mandates annual reports from CBP’s commissioner on the agency’s efforts to ensure personal items are returned to migrants, an explanation of situations in which essential items were discarded and plans to reduce such instances in the future.

It also requires the comptroller general of the U.S. to review CBP’s annual reports and evaluate the effectiveness of its guidance on personal belongings, as well as CBP personnel’s level of compliance with the guidance.

CBP spokesman John Mennell told the Arizona Daily Star the agency does not comment on pending litigation. But CBP recently developed guidance that would likely become permanent and subject to regular monitoring under the new legislation, if passed.

In August, following a critical report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, CBP issued a directive standardizing how agents should handle migrants’ personal belongings.

A CBP statement said the directive “aligns standards across CBP’s operations nationwide and sets forth policy guidelines that govern the agency’s handling of detainee personal property at short-term holding facilities. These guidelines allow detainees to keep as much of their personal property as their short-term holding facility’s physical and personnel capacity, safety considerations, and transportation limitations allow, while ensuring compliance with the law.”

The American Civil Liberties Union in Arizona called the directive “groundbreaking” in August.

The directive “makes clear that Border Patrol is obligated to safeguard migrants’ personal belongings at holding facilities, rather than to confiscate or force people to discard their property,” the ACLU said. “This policy change is a victory for immigrants’ rights and follows more than a decade of advocacy and documentation highlighting the harms caused by stripping people of their most essential and cherished belongings.”

The new guidelines designated a wide range of items as “essential,” including medical items, legal documents, items of religious significance and items of significant monetary or sentimental value, the ACLU said. It also set clearer standards on the management and replacement of non-U.S. prescription medications and established “property custodians” to oversee handling of migrants’ belongings at CBP short-term holding facilities.

‘Groundbreaking’ directive ignored

But migrant-rights advocates say CBP’s August directive is still being ignored by too many border agents.

At binational migrant-aid nonprofit Kino Border Initiative’s shelter in Nogales, recently deported migrants routinely report important personal belongings have been confiscated, including money, documents, medications and items of sentimental value, said Joanna Williams, executive director of Kino Border Initiative, or KBI.

In November alone, more than 100 people submitted complaints through KBI’s intake program about CBP’s failure to return their property, she said.

“Clearly, if we have 107 cases so far this month, it continues to be a challenge,” Williams said on Nov. 27. “What’s so important about this legislation is that it makes the directive permanent and has a monitoring mechanism. Increasing accountability will help us see a concrete difference on the ground.”

Since August, CBP leaders have consulted with aid workers on how the directive is working, which is encouraging, Williams said.

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“I do think that CBP leadership is interested in this directive working out. I think the issue is how that gets communicated down (to front-line agents) and then what the accountability and follow-up mechanisms are,” she said.

Agents’ confiscation and sometimes destruction of migrants’ personal property inflicts “unnecessary suffering on individuals and their families,” Sarah Mehta, senior border policy counsel for the ACLU, said in a press release about the proposed legislation. “This legislation is essential to rein in these abusive practices and uphold the dignity and rights of people seeking refuge or a better life in the United States.”

Dora Rodriguez, a migrant-rights activist and co-founder of the nonprofit aid group Salvavision, said the winter weather makes it even more important that border agents return migrants’ cold-weather attire.

In late October, during a cold snap that brought bitter temperatures to Arizona’s borderlands, humanitarian aid workers encountered a mother and her two young children who had just crossed the border east of Sásabe, in order to request asylum in the U.S. The woman’s 10-month-old daughter was wearing a warm, hooded onesie and her 10-year-old son had on a thick parka, Rodriguez said.

Within 24 hours, border agents had quickly deported the family to Nogales, Sonora, where Rodriguez encountered them at the repatriation office of Mexico’s immigration agency.

Both children’s cold-weather attire — the onesie and the parka — had been confiscated and not returned, Rodriguez said. The mother said border agents threw the coats in the trash, leaving the young boy in a tee shirt and the infant in a thin, long-sleeved shirt, Rodriguez said.

“This is just one case. We have hundreds and hundreds of cases where the children come (back to Mexico) with no outer layer of clothes,” she said. “It’s just cruel and dehumanizing. ... I don’t understand if the agents know some of these families are going back home on a two-day trip with those little ones, in those cold buses, with nothing to protect them from the cold.”

As the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona ramps up prosecutions of migrants, even as apprehensions are now at four-year lows, CBP will have to also coordinate with the U.S. Marshals Service on safekeeping detainees’ belongings during the custody transfer, Williams said.

That “makes the chain of custody more complicated,” she said.

Long-standing issue

In June, the Star reported on the ongoing issue of border agents confiscating prescription medications and either discarding them, or failing to return them before migrants leave their custody. CBP’s practices led to medical harm for vulnerable individuals and wasted funds, medical staff at migrant-aid shelter Casa Alitas told the Star.

Advocates have for years decried border agents’ practice of discarding migrants’ personal property while they’re in CBP custody.

In August 2022, the ACLU of Arizona wrote a letter to former CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus about border agents’ confiscation of at least 64 turbans from asylum seekers of the Sikh faith so far that year, alleging religious-freedom violations.

“Forcibly removing or targeting a Sikh’s turban or facial hair has symbolized denying that person the right to belong to the Sikh faith and is perceived by many as the most humiliating and hurtful physical and spiritual injury that can be inflicted upon a Sikh,” the letter said.

Then in November 2022, a group of legislators, including Grijalva, called for a formal review by the Government Accountability Office into the CBP’s practices and procedures regarding migrants’ possessions.GAO staff said they interviewed officials and conducted site visits at 16 CBP facilities in Arizona, California and Texas as part of their review.

The office published its resulting report in May 2024, which made three recommendations, including that CBP develop “clarifying guidance” on how personal property should be collected, stored and returned; a mechanism for monitoring how the guidance is being implemented; and written instructions for migrants released from CBP custody on how to retrieve lost or missing personal property, including specific information on the facilities in which they were held.

CBP issued its directive on detainees’ personal belongings three months later.

In a press release, Deepali Gill, federal policy manager of the Sikh Coalition, called the new legislation “a vital step towards ensuring the humane treatment” of those in CBP custody.

The Sikh community’s “personal effects often include deeply significant articles of faith like turbans,” Gill said. “By establishing clear guidelines to safeguard these and other essential belongings, the bill reflects a meaningful commitment to dignity and human rights, and it should help ensure that no one is forced to compromise their faith or identity during detention.”