More than one-third of deported migrants experience some type of abuse or mistreatment by U.S. immigration agents in the process of being sent away from the country, according to a new study released this week by the immigrant advocacy organization Kino Border Initiative (KBI). Customs and Border Protection agents routinely verbally and physically abuse border crossers, take their possessions, and conduct nighttime deportations, the report found.
One in three men and women said they were subjected to some type of abuse, which the report stated “can deter them from making complaints… and make it more difficult to identify individuals in need of international protection.” After verbal abuse, the second most common form of mistreatment was the confiscation of and failure to return belongings, with men more likely to have their belongings taken and not returned. Without money or cell phones, people deported from the United States are vulnerable to extortion and can be stranded in dangerous border cities.
Border agents also carried out unsafe deportation practices: As many as 28 percent of migrants, including nearly 16 percent of women, reported that they were deported at night to Mexico. Nighttime deportations are especially dangerous because emergency shelters, transportation, and other services may not be open, leaving deportees stranded with no shelter and food, sometimes in cities where criminal organizations may operate.
Widespread abuse and confiscation of possessions aren’t the only issues that Mexican migrants have run into with border agents; they also have to deal with coerced deportations. Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego settled Lopez-Venegas v. Johnson, a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, after nine Mexican nationals alleged they were coerced into signing documents allowing for their “voluntary return” back to their countries of origin. The individuals alleged that they were not given a chance to be heard by an immigration judge, even though they may have qualified for legal status under certain circumstances.
ACLU attorneys believe that there could potentially be hundreds more migrants returned to Mexico in a similar fashion. Through ads and posters placed in Mexico, ACLU attorneys are reaching out to some deportees who agreed to voluntary returns between June 1, 2009 and August 28, 2014. Those individuals must show that they could qualify for certain forms of relief if they were given the chance to have their cases adjudicated. Once returned to the United States, deportees would be returned to the same immigration status that they were in before they agreed to voluntary return.
“Border patrol agents often told people that there were no real consequences, that they could easily fix their papers,” Gabriela Rivera, an ACLU staff attorney, told ThinkProgress in early September when the first group of six complainants were allowed back into the United States. Until their cases are adjudicated, they will be allowed to stay with the same immigration status that they were in before they agreed to voluntary return.
The six individuals included people who had been deported six months to three years ago. The deportees all had strong family ties in the United States. “They would sign their forms and find out that there was no easy way to come back to the United States,” Rivera added.
“They all had a right to see the judge,” Gabriel Urias, a Lopez-Venegas Staff Attorney, explained to ThinkProgress around the same time. “The underlying critical thing is that at the time that they were detained, for many of our plaintiffs, they were just doing normal everyday things like going to a bus stop, or living lives as normal people… If they had seen an immigration judge, they would have had strong cases to stay in the United States.”
On Tuesday, four immigrants returned to the United States through the San Ysidro, California port of entry under the settlement. “The consequences of voluntary return are life-changing for some people,” Rivera said. “It’s about keeping families together. U.S.-citizen children should not be separated from their families.”
Last week, the head of the border patrol union called for an additional 5,000 more border patrol agents to guard the south Texas border in response to increasing cartel violence in Mexico. But adding thousands of extra agents could potentially lead to similar abuse allegations, especially since training sessions were scaled back from 20 weeks to fewer than 54 days if an agent speaks Spanish, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.
A 2013 Center for Investigative Reporting report found that during a hiring surge that began in 2006 — which eventually added 17,000 employees — thousands of would-be agents were hired without polygraph screenings. Of the applicants who made it to the polygraph exam (one of the last steps of the process), some prospective agents admitted to “significant admissions” like murder, bestiality, rape, and having links to organized crime. The KBI report came to similar conclusions, finding that “more [than] 55 percent were very clearly unsuitable for employment as federal LEOs [law enforcement officers]” based on polygraph exams gathered between 2006 and 2008.
The new KBI report comes from both an in-depth survey of 358 Mexican migrants deported from the United States to the border city of Nogales, Mexico and a short-form survey of 7,507 migrants between the second half of 2014 and the first three months of 2015, roughly the time period covering the first year of CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske’s tenure.
In spite of a new leader, who promised greater transparency and a reduction of use of force by agents, the report findings are unsurprising. A December 2013 University of Arizona report found that one in five migrants reported being deported between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. The same report also found that that 39 percent of migrants reported losing or having their possessions taken during the detention and deportation process, leaving them without identification, cash, or cell phones once they have been deported.
The CBP agency is trying to change its image. The agency is committed to hiring 1,600 female agents by the end of the 2015 fiscal year, which ends on September 30, to accommodate the growing number of Latin American mothers and children showing up at the southern border.