Thread: Borderline cruelty: U.S. Border Patrol must end human rights

Would love to hear the Border Patrol's take on this character. There may be a bad apple in any group but this character has some kind of agenda or something going on that doesn't pass the smell test.
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Borderline cruelty: U.S. Border Patrol must end human rights abuses

September 30, 2011
Randall H. McGuire


I met Manuela at humanitarian group No More Deaths' aid station for deportees in Nogales, Sonora, México. The Border Patrol had picked her up in the desert, along with her husband and their 9-year-old son, three days earlier. She and her family were returning to their Denver home of 10 years from her mother's funeral in Guadalajara.

In the desert, a border patrol helicopter dusted their party of migrants. As people scattered in panic, the family stayed together. But a day later, they were lost, exhausted and dehydrated. The Border Patrol agents separated the family, putting the husband and son in one truck and Manuela in another, with a promise to reunite them when they were deported.

However, the Border Patrol had deposited Manuela with a group of other women and children on the streets of Nogales at 2 o'clock that morning. Agents had returned her pink book-bag, but missing was her Mexican identity card, her son's Denver birth certificate and $500 in cash. After three days of combing Nogales for her family, Manuela left for Guadalajara. I can only hope that the family was reunited there.

On Sept. 21, No More Deaths released a report titled "A Culture of Cruelty" that shows that Manuela's story is not unique or unusual. This report demonstrates that the Border Patrol systematically abuses people in short-term custody and that existing policies and standards inadequately address a culture of impunity within the agency.

Rather than these abuses being the work of a few rogue agents, the Border Patrol has become a rogue agency. The report draws on interviews with almost 13,000 deportees conducted over 2 1/2 years. Deportees across the sample consistently report the same abuses. Many shared Manuela's experiences of being separated from her family, being endangered in the desert by Border Patrol's aggressive "dusting" tactic, not having credentials and money returned, and being repatriated to the dark streets of a dangerous city.

Other deportees — men, women and children — also reported that Border Patrol agents denied them water, food and/or medical treatment, housed them in unsanitary and overcrowded holding cells, and verbally threatened or humiliated them. Ten percent of those interviewed reported physical abuse. Increasingly, deportees report psychological abuses that meet the definition of torture under international law.

Virtually all of these abuses violate existing Department of Homeland Security policies for the treatment of individuals in custody and an international agreement between the United States and México concerning the treatment of Mexican deportees. Despite this fact, inadequate procedures exist within the Border Patrol for identifying and correcting systematic abuse. The abuses continue while the agency denies that they exist.

The abuses continue as part of a militarization of the border. Since 1994, the United States has pursued a policy of forcing migrants into perilous desert and mountainous terrain. This policy explicitly made physical risk, increased financial cost and death deterrents to undocumented border crossings. Since the beginning of the recession in 2008, the number of migrants crossing the border has fallen precipitously, yet the number of people dying in the desert has remained constant.

We should not be surprised that we find systematic abuses of human rights and a culture of cruelty in the Border Patrol. The U.S. government has charged this agency with implementing a policy designed to maximize the risks to migrants' health and lives.

The Border Patrol is one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the United States, and its abuses reach far beyond the border and affect all Americans, not just undocumented migrants. One cannot travel in any direction from Tucson without being subject to Border Patrol scrutiny.

The Border Patrol's violation of Manuela's and thousands of other migrants' human rights flies in the face of the United States' long-term commitment to justice, accountability and the rule of law. The time has come to institute a structure of independent oversight. This structure must be able to enforce binding standards for the treatment of detainees and hold the Border Patrol and its contractors accountable when abuses occur. More broadly, we need to institute a humane border policy that respects families and human rights.

McGuire is a distinguished professor of anthropology at Binghamton University who has done research along the U.S.-Mexican border for more than 30 years. He is currently a resident scholar in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona.

www.pressconnects.com

I have no sympathy for these complaints. I hope they spread the word about our so-called "abuses", I hope illegal aliens from around the world learn that this is not the place for them, they will not be treated well, they will be treated like the criminals and thieves they are, the disrespecters of our country that they are, and the abusers and killers of our citizens that they are.

We are not interested in their work, culture, "contributions" or problems. It is not possible for our people to be friends with people of other countries in our country illegally until they leave and return to their home country and stay there.

So what? Every deportee should get a bud Lt and a teddy bear?
How about a kiss good-bye? And a $100.00 Walmart gift card for when they break back in! I have NO compassion. Make it miserable. Not violent.
Just really, really miserable!

And I'll just bet Mexico treats their illegals far more kindly.

quote(Other deportees — men, women and children — also reported that Border Patrol agents denied them water, food and/or medical treatment, housed them in unsanitary and overcrowded holding cells, and verbally threatened or humiliated them. Ten percent of those interviewed reported physical abuse. Increasingly, deportees report psychological abuses that meet the definition of torture under international law.)quote


I call bull,I know agents personally who buy sandwiches, provide water,first aid to the children the only time force is used when someone turns violent on the agent. The writer has an agenda and of course a liberal one at that. I would suggest the author of this article ride with the agents a week to see the problems they take on with the new breed of illegal.