Pattern of "impunity" increases migrants’ risk of abuse by U.S. agents, report says

Assaults, denial of medical care, family separations, confiscation of personal documents and dangerous nighttime deportations are among the hundreds of incidents highlighted in a new report on human rights violations at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The alleged incidents rarely result in a thorough investigation, disciplinary action or policy changes, which the report’s authors say that reflects a pattern of “impunity” within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“This is a part of what allows these human rights abuses to continue to occur, because there are not currently sufficient consequences for officers or agents who do participate in these human rights violations,” said Zoe Martens, report co-author and advocacy coordinator with Kino Border Initiative, whose migrant aid shelter in Nogales, Sonora assisted 6,000 migrants last year.

The report, “Abuses at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” was co-authored by Martens and Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, a D.C.-based research and advocacy group that promotes human rights and social justice in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The report includes a live database of more than 400 incidents, or summaries of multiple similar incidents, logged between January 2020 and August 2023. The events were drawn from news accounts and reports from migrant shelters along the border, primarily Kino Border Initiative. The Catholic-led nonprofit provides humanitarian and legal aid to migrants on the border and has been helping migrants file formal complaints about abuse allegations since 2015.

The misconduct doesn’t reflect the behavior of most border agents under U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of DHS, but the lack of accountability for even serious human rights violations harms the credibility of border enforcement agencies, the report’s authors say.

“Respecting human rights goes hand in hand with good border governance,” Martens said. “I don’t see those things as mutually exclusive.”

The report describes multiple “failure points” where complaints submitted to DHS tend to be lost or stalled. This includes during transfers between DHS’ four accountability offices or when complaints are submitted to the wrong office — a common mistake, as the offices have overlapping areas of responsibility.

The report’s level of detail helps identify realistic ways to fix the flawed system, said Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst with the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, a watchdog group that investigates and exposes government waste, corruption and efforts to silence whistleblowers.

“We knew the (DHS) complaint process was broken, but seeing the specific failure points is extremely helpful,” Hawkins said.

In addition to improving the complaints process, CBP should encourage agents to speak up when they see bad behavior and respond to those concerns with meaningful disciplinary action or policy changes, Isacson said.

“The key to stopping (human rights violations) is for the majority to be able to speak up about it,” he said. “Right now, too many of the good ones believe that’s career death, and that’s a huge disincentive — you put your career on the line and then nothing happens.”

CBP response

In an emailed statement on Thursday, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson defended the agency’s commitment to accountability and highlighted recent reforms that bolster it.

“CBP takes all allegations of misconduct seriously, investigates thoroughly, and holds employees accountable when policies are violated,” the statement said in part. “We have also implemented significant reforms that make CBP more transparent and accountable to the American people. CBP recently updated our enhanced vehicle pursuit policy to ensure it is safer and more impactful. We have enhanced our commitment to transparency: deploying thousands of body-worn cameras to the field, and expeditiously releasing information and body-worn camera footage following critical incidents. In addition, we have strengthened our internal investigative processes when employees are accused of misconduct.”

Former CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus, who was ousted in January after less than a year on the job, oversaw the implementation of some of those accountability measures. Magnus said in a Friday email to the Star that “actions, not platitudes, are what count.”

“Accountability and transparency should be among the highest priorities for CBP and all law enforcement agencies,” said Magnus, former Tucson chief of police. “Unfortunately, these are easy terms to throw around in speeches, press releases, and mission statements. These are things that must be demonstrated through policies that reflect best practices, leadership at the top willing to support change, and meaningful consequences for those who violate policies and break laws.”

Documentation matters

Kino’s complaint-filing effort, which began in 2015, has evolved into an ongoing test of the DHS accountability system, which the report describes as “bewildering, opaque and slow-moving.”

When Kino staffers began raising migrants’ accounts of abuse with local CBP officers, CBP said they needed specific examples and names to take action, Martens said.

“We took them at their word” and began filing formal complaints, Martens said. “It’s an act of faith, and an act of hope, that these offices will live up more fully to what their missions really are.”

Documenting these abuses can feel like “yelling into a void,” said Chelsea Sachau, managing attorney for Tucson-based Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which provides free legal services to detained adults and children facing deportation. Sachau is on the nonprofit’s border action team, which spends most of the week working at KBI’s migrant aid shelter.

The Kino Border Initiative and WOLA’s database of documented abuses is an important “labor of love,” Sachau said.

“Documentation matters, because what we see every day is often out of sight, out of mind or unknown to much of the U.S.,” she said. “It’s at least a tangible recognition for the victims that ‘I heard you, and I’m making sure the public knows about this. Even if we can’t effect an outcome for you personally, we want to be sure we are building out an archive of how often this is happening.’”

Long delays

The report recommends DHS create a portal that allows complainants to create an account and follow the progress of their case. Currently, Martens said, most migrants never get a response to their complaints or the response comes years later, when the victim has already moved on and can no longer be interviewed.

She recounted the story of Carlos, a Guatemalan migrant apprehended by border agents in the Arizona desert in late 2020. He told Kino workers that before crossing the U.S. border, he’d been held hostage and forced to work for an organized crime group in northern Mexico, after he couldn’t pay the smugglers’ fee for the final leg of his journey to the U.S.

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After escaping his captors and fleeing north, he told U.S. border agents what happened and that he feared for his life. Agents nevertheless released him in Nogales, Sonora at 2 a.m., Martens said, citing the complaint he filed at the time.

When Carlos asked why he was being released in Mexico instead of being sent to his native Guatemala, he said an agent called him an idiot in Spanish, struck him on the knee with a baton and threatened to hit him again if he kept asking questions. When Carlos arrived at the Kino Border Initiative, he could barely walk and thought his knee was broken, Martens said.

Kino’s staff helped Carlos file a formal complaint with DHS. Nearly two years later, in August 2022, Martens finally got a response when DHS’ Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties called. They were forwarded the complaint from the DHS Office of the Inspector General, which has first right of refusal on all complaints, and they were trying to find Carlos to interview him.

By that time, Martens had no way to reach Carlos, she said. She asked for more details on the investigation, but the investigator said she’d have to file a public records request under the Freedom of Information Act, a process that can take years, Martens said. The investigator said Carlos, too, would have had to file a records request to get the details of his own complaint.

This account “really illustrates a lot of issues with the system: the delays, the different offices where complaints get passed back and forth, and the lack of transparency, even for the people who experienced this abuse themselves,” Martens said.

Inspector general questioned

The current head of one of DHS’ most powerful accountability offices, the Office of the Inspector General, has a problematic history, said Hawkins of the Project on Government Oversight.

POGO has extensively investigated DHS inspector general Joseph Cuffari, a Trump appointee, who recently settled a lawsuit accusing him of retaliating against a whistleblower. The nearly $1.2 million settlement prompted top Democrats to issue a joint letter in July calling for further investigation.

Cuffari’s own testimony “raises serious concerns about your possibly retaliatory actions and lack of candor, improper use of taxpayer dollars, and lack of truthfulness in your communications with Congress,” wrote Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

One of the report’s recommendations is the dismissal of Cuffari.

“DHS is too important to not have an inspector general who is really effective and who is keeping the organization in a state of high morale and high efficiency,” Isacson said.

Lawmaker support needed

Over the years, KBI staff have formed relationships with front-line workers in DHS’ four accountability offices. Martens said she solicited their feedback on the feasibility of the report’s policy recommendations.

Often, Martens said, “their response was that (the recommended change) makes a lot of sense, but it comes down to money and resources.”

Among the report’s recommendations is more congressional support. Legislators should push CBP to release required public reports on time, such as an overdue report on integrity and accountability, Isacson said. Accountability offices must be adequately staffed and funded, and lawmakers should keep human-rights abuses in the public eye by raising the issue in funding discussions with DHS, he said.

“The committees that are supposed to oversee and fund them can ask all the questions they want,” he said. “They’re appropriating the money.”

In an emailed statement on Friday, U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, said the abuses highlighted in the report are “unconscionable and unacceptable, especially as the Tucson Sector is under a permanent injunction for past abuses. … I urge the Biden administration to hold accountable those at the Department of Homeland Security and CBP responsible for these actions. We have both a moral and legal obligation to do better.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said in an email that migrants must be treated with dignity wherever they are encountered.

“As the son of two police officers, I have great appreciation for our law enforcement. That is why I have secured and continue to fight for more resources and support for our CBP officers and Border Patrol agents who have difficult jobs on the border. At the same time, there has to be accountability. And Congress needs to do its job and step up to fix our broken immigration system.”

“Act of courage”

Martens said it’s “an act of courage” for migrants to go on the record with their experience of mistreatment by filing a complaint, especially knowing they’re unlikely to get a response.

“We don’t want to mislead people. We explain pretty clearly that there likely won’t be a personal benefit for them,” she said. Many file a complaint anyway, in hopes of helping others avoid the same experience, she said.

She recalled a father and his teenaged son whom she met last summer: They had traveled from Chiapas in southern Mexico, fleeing persecution by criminal organizations. The man told Martens he couldn’t go to the local police because some were connected to the criminal groups.

He reported that border agents forced him and his son to sign return paperwork to go back to Mexico, without channeling them to an asylum officer, Martens said. The man said agents told him, “Mexico isn’t that dangerous. You should just go talk to the police,” showing a lack of understanding of the connection between government and organized crime in Mexico, Martens said.

At Kino, Martens offered to help the man file a complaint about the violation of his right to request asylum. She explained he likely wouldn’t get justice in his case, but that documenting it could help improve the system for others. The man quickly agreed, saying, “Don’t worry — we’re used to lack of justice in our own country,” Martens recalled.

The comment stuck with her.

“These are our U.S. accountability systems. I think we’d assume they are more effective than in places where we know impunity is widespread,” as in Mexico, she said. “We must, and we can, do better.”