The American Civil Liberties Union has one mission, “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” As their quote boldly states every person in this country, that includes our immigrant brothers as well, and through their Border Litigation Project, the ACLU has come across a troubling pattern, of what their socially committed Staff Attorney Mitra Ebadolahi, has called, an ‘egregious’ story of abuse against vulnerable minors by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
On December of 2014, Ms. Ebadolahi through the ACLU, requested all the investigative files on complaints filed by minors, in order to examine these longstanding allegations of child abuse committed by the CBP. It wasn’t until last year that Ms. Ebadolahi received the 408 complaints that were filed between early 2009 all the way through mid-2015.
After evaluating the thousands of pages of these documents, Ms. Ebadolahi has shed light on a number of incidents, where the detained minors alleged that they were violently mistreated and even coerced to pay bribes, in what is a clear violation of Border Patrol protocols.
To put things into context, Ms. Ebadolahi has reported that she found 13 allegations of abuse, that range from harassment to the groping by CBP officers; 97 allegations of physical abuse, where there are claims of officers purposely running over minors during persecution; 61 allegations of verbal abuse, with no shortage of derogatory, racist, comments and 201 allegations of poor conditions, such as cold temperatures, spoiled food, no water, etc.
As shocking as these allegations might seem, the CBP’s actions towards investigating them, tells us that they don’t believe minor abuse to be worrying at all. Saying that the CBP has an interest in clarifying these allegations might be much of a stretch. As of now, in only 2% of the investigative files was the complainant reached for an interview. Efforts to contact the agents involved are also scarce, with only 4% of the files showing that the involved officer was reached for an interview. Only 1% of the case files show reports of witnesses being interviewed. Of the 408 case files there is only one with reports of physical evidence being collected and another where the site reported was visited for further investigation.
As you can surely guess by now, not a single agent has been even close to being prosecuted for these allegations, much the less, reprimanded, suspended or fired. It would seem that the CBP is above even their own law. In October 2015, the detailed protocols and standards when dealing with minors were laid out in a document called National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search. On this document it clearly states that nobody can be detained for more than 72 hours and that the detainees require adequate temperature, medical provisions, bathroom access and nutrition, not to mention a very clear zero policy that condemns any and all forms of abuse.
In response to these allegations, a CBP spokesperson issued a statement that reads “An investigation conducted into the complainant’s allegations revealed no evidence of inappropriate or threatening behavior by CBP personnel. CBP takes all allegations of mistreatment seriously, and does not tolerate actions that are not consistent with our core values of Vigilance, Service to Country and Integrity.”
For now the ACLU will continue to investigate these allegations, in hopes that it will better the harsh conditions faced by immigrant children in this country.