ACLU: U.S. Government Deports People into Harm’s Way
Posted on April 5, 2016 by Micah McCoy — No Comments ?
Border Rights Groups Urge DHS to Investigate Widespread Dispossession of Belongings
LAS CRUCES, NM— Today, civil and human rights organizations in Mexico and the United States filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on behalf of 26 people. Immigration officials confiscated and failed to return the people’s personal belongings, exposing them to severe risk of harm upon their return to Mexico. The complaint shows how U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in the El Paso Border Patrol Sector—which covers West Texas and all of New Mexico—routinely dispossess people of their personal belongings, deporting them to Mexico without money, identification and legal documents, mobile phones, and other important personal possessions.
“Deporting people without their personal belongings isn’t just wrong, it’s cruel,” said Vicki B. Gaubeca, director of the ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
“Imagine being abandoned a thousand miles from home without money, ID, or a cell phone. We as Americans need to stop the wholesale robbery of people, and start treating noncitizens with the same dignity and humanity that we would want for ourselves.”
The ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights, the ACLU of Texas, the American Immigration Council, the Programa de Defensa e Incidencia Binacional, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción, A.C., El Centro de Recursos para Migrantes, the Kino Border Initiative, and Senda de Vida filed the administrative complaint today with the DHS Office of Inspector General, the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility, and the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility. The complaint details how CBP and ICE take individuals’ belongings and do not provide an effective process to reclaim them. When people try to reclaim their belongings, some agents have responded by threatening them with more detention time. These abuses persist despite recent national policy changes on belongings within CBP. A recent report showed that the U.S. government deports as many as one in three people to Mexico without their personal belongings.
“For years, we have documented the grave consequences that noncitizens face when the U.S. government deports them to Mexico without their belongings,” said Blanca Navarrete, the Director of the Programa de Defensa e Incidencia Binacional, in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. “Without money, voter cards and other identification, cellular phones, and warm clothes, these individuals struggle to return to their home communities from the border. Many continue to struggle when they return home and cannot obtain work without identity documents. The Mexican voter card is particularly important because it is the primary means that people in Mexico use to prove their identity and it requires multiple original identity documents to replace.”
More:
https://www.aclu-nm.org/aclu-u-s-government-deports-people-into-harms-way/2016/04/
The underlining was added by me. That comment struck me - the Justice Department recently reinstated civil asset forfeiture:
http://www.cato.org/blog/department-justice-restarts-equitable-sharing-program So the Border Patrol is only doing the same thing to deportees that numerous police departments are doing to American citizens all over the country.
That does not make either case right - but perhaps the international community should insist that the people being shipped out of the US should be treated fairly with humanity. Then Americans could insist that they be treated the same way.
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