Tag Archives: border agents

U.S. to outfit border agents with body cameras in major oversight move

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States will require thousands of border agents to wear body cameras, according to three officials and government documents, a major operational change that could increase oversight of agents and also help capture criminal activity.

The cameras are expected to be rolled out in parts of Texas and New Mexico during the summer and expanded in the fall and winter to Arizona, California, and Texas’ busy Rio Grande Valley, which all border Mexico, according to a recent government assessment of how the devices could impact privacy. Agents in Vermont along the U.S. border with Canada will also be equipped with cameras, the assessment said.

U.S. border authorities plan to deploy a total of 7,500 body-worn cameras, with 6,000 in the field by the end of the year, a border agency official told Reuters.

Pro-immigrant activists will likely welcome the increased oversight that cameras could bring to an agency some have criticized for excessive use of force and institutional racism. But a union for border patrol agents also supports cameras, saying they could assist criminal investigations and help show that agents act professionally.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have called on border patrol agents to use the cameras to improve accountability in the wake of several high-profile fatal shootings by law enforcement over the past decade.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, stressed that agents should have access to the footage, including when an agent is accused of wrongdoing.

Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), is the largest law enforcement agency in the United States, which presents a unique challenge for video footage collection and storage.

Recordings of illegal activity, use of force or agent misconduct could be used as evidence in investigations or prosecutions, the privacy assessment said.

The cameras could offer new insight into the policing of the southern border, where migrant arrests have risen to 20-year highs in recent months and encounters sometimes take place in remote areas.

In cases where footage could be used as evidence in a criminal case, it could be retained for up to 75 years, according to the privacy assessment. Footage that does not have value as evidence would be destroyed within 180 days.

After a bipartisan group of lawmakers spearheaded efforts to secure funding for bodycams, CBP awarded a total of about $21 million to Axon Enterprises Inc. for body cameras and to connect the cameras to a cloud-based storage system, according to the agency official.

The devices are the size of a deck of playing cards and will be affixed to the front of agents’ uniforms, the official said.

Axon declined to comment on the rollout.

CBP conducted a small pilot of body cameras in 2015, but ultimately opted not to deploy them then.

An agency assessment at the time said the cameras would likely reduce the use of physical force on the job, but cited a number of reasons not to adopt the devices, including cost and agent morale.

Gil Kerlikowske, who was CBP commissioner at the time, said another consideration was that the cameras “did not hold up particularly well” in the field, where they could be knocked off in the brush or mucked up with dust and dirt.

Body cameras have become more commonplace since the 2015 effort. The U.S. Department of Justice said in June that its agents would be required to wear cameras when serving search and arrest warrants.

Kerlikowske said many law enforcement officers support the idea, too.

“There are now police officers who won’t go on the street without their body camera,” he said. “They want that video image.”

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington, editing by Ross Colvin, Aurora Ellis, Mica Rosenberg and Diane Craft)

A family business: how and why smugglers are bringing more children to the U.S. border

By Laura Gottesdiener

LA TECNICA, Guatemala (Reuters) – Honduran mother Alicia Cruz handed herself and her son in to border agents in Texas, then watched as unaccompanied children were separated for release from the group of migrants before adults and families, including hers, were expelled into Mexico.

That’s when she contracted a smuggler to ferry Jeffrey, 17, across the border again – alone.

“Leaving my son destroyed me,” Cruz said this month, speaking from the Guatemalan-Mexican border as she headed south towards Honduras. She said her son was with relatives in Texas. “The last thing he said was ‘let me go to study, work so I can help you’.”

Almost 10,000 under-18s from Central America crossed illegally from Mexico into the United States without their parents in February, nearly double the previous month’s figures, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

The spike comes after U.S. President Joe Biden’s government, citing humanitarian reasons, said in early February it would not rapidly expel unaccompanied minors, a policy shift from the previous administration.

More than any other group of migrants, these children pose a political, logistical and moral challenge for Biden, testing the administration’s ability to safely process and house new arrivals fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.

Reuters spoke to over a dozen self-identified smugglers in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador to gain insight into how and why so many unaccompanied minors are moving through the region and crossing the border alone. All requested anonymity or nicknames in order to freely discuss the illegal industry.

The story of how the children reach the United States is varied. Some, like Jeffrey, come as far as the border with their parents; others cross with friends or relatives who are not their legal guardians.

A third group, including children as young as two years old, make the perilous journey through some of Mexico’s most lawless, cartel-controlled territory in the care only of human smugglers.

CBP did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the cases detailed by the smugglers and Cruz. Reuters was not able to independently verify the events they described.

More than half the smugglers consulted said they had transported unaccompanied minors in recent weeks, moving them by bus, car, boat and even by plane, which one well-connected smuggler called his network’s “faster new method” to bring children up from Central America.

The trips cost thousands of dollars per child and are often financed by parents or relatives already in the United States.

Three smugglers told Reuters they have been encouraging parents to send their children alone as a result of the shift in U.S. policy.

“It’s good to take advantage of the moment, because children are able to pass quickly,” said Daniel, a Guatemalan smuggler. “That’s what we’re telling everyone.”

A White House spokesperson said last month that Biden’s approach was to deal with immigration “comprehensively, fairly and humanely” and not to expel unaccompanied children who arrive at U.S. borders.

A FAMILY BUSINESS

Many children that the U.S. government classifies as “unaccompanied” actually travel with other family members – cousins, uncles, or older siblings.

But some smugglers said their networks have also been organizing children-only trips in recent weeks.

Vazquez, a Mexican smuggler who said he specializes in unaccompanied children, said the youngest child he has transported in recent weeks was a 2-year-old toddler who traveled without any other family members. On his most recent trip, he transported a group of 17 children between the ages of 5 and 9 from southern Mexico across the border into Texas.

Of those 17 children, the majority of their parents were already living in the United States, and none of them were accompanied by other family members, he said.

After moving the children across Mexico by bus, he kept them in his own home near the U.S. border, where his wife and older daughter helped care for them until it was time for him to cross them into Texas and turn them over to U.S. border agents.

“It’s a family business,” he said.

Vazquez said the cartel that controls the territory along the border in his region mandates that he and other smugglers use the migrant children as a decoy for the cartel’s own drug smuggling operations.

Smugglers offer cheaper trips for families and unaccompanied children who plan to surrender themselves to U.S. border agents and ask for asylum, compared to those who seek to enter the United States undetected.

“We deliver children to immigration (agents) and immigration (agents) are responsible for delivering them to their family members in the United States,” said Daniel.

Guatemalans make up the largest group of unaccompanied minors, CBP data shows. A second smuggler in Guatemala said that pre-existing relationships between families and smugglers in small towns often make parents more willing to send their kids alone.

“They send their kids with someone they know, who has already transported other family members,” he said.

He estimated about 100 children were leaving the city of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, without their parents each week in March, which he said was well above ‘normal’ levels.

DIRECT BY PLANE

In 2019, smugglers sped up trips to the U.S. border by transporting unaccompanied minors from Central America on express buses.

But Roberto, a smuggler who said he is linked to a powerful cartel in Ciudad Juarez, said his network is now flying minors directly from Central America to the U.S. border by plane.

He was one of three smugglers who told Reuters they are moving children, including unaccompanied minors, on private or commercial flights between Guatemala and Mexico, or between Mexican cities.

Internal Mexican government assessments reviewed by Reuters also state that smugglers have been flying migrants directly to the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, or even into Houston, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona.

Mexican immigration agents detained 95 people, including eight unaccompanied minors, for traveling without proper documentation after they arrived on two domestic commercial flights into the northern city of Monterrey on Friday. The majority were Hondurans, while there were also a handful of people from El Salvador, Cuba and Guatemala, according to Mexican immigration authorities.

CBP, the Mexican foreign ministry, and Mexico’s immigration agency did not immediately respond to request for comment about smuggling via commercial flights.

Despite the growing demand, some smugglers told Reuters that they try to steer clear of transporting children.

“It’s a risk,” said a Salvadoran smuggler who goes by the nickname El Barrenga. “Maybe the child’s been stolen, for example. It’s safer if they’re with their parents.”

Even Vazquez, the smuggler who specializes in children, admitted that minors bring their own challenges.

“If an adult causes problems, you can ditch them, easily,” he said. “But you can’t abandon a child for having a temper tantrum.”

(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in La Técnica, Guatemala, and Monterrey, Mexico; additional reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Rosalba O’Brien)

An ever-expanding job for border agents: sensitive decisions on migrants’ fates

FILE PHOTO: Men are crowded in a room at a Border Patrol station in a still image from video in McAllen, Texas, U.S. on June 10, 2019 and released as part of a report by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General on July 2, 2019. Picture pixelated at source. Office of Inspector General/DHS/Handout via REUTERS./File Photo

By Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Cooke

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – In a U.S. border patrol facility in El Paso, Texas, labels on holding cells indicate whether migrants have been selected – “yes” or “no” – for a new Trump administration program that sends asylum seekers to wait out their U.S. court hearings in Mexico.

Democratic Congresswoman Nanette Barragan, who saw the signs on Monday during a tour of the station, said a cell labeled yes was filled; there was nobody in a cell labeled no.

Such determinations, highly important in the lives of migrants who may face violence across the border, are made on a daily basis by frontline uniformed officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

Under new Trump administration policies, CBP officers increasingly are tasked with making sensitive decisions about the fate of migrants even as they struggle with the pressures of increased arrivals and heightened – and sometimes highly critical – public scrutiny.

Tensions boiled over this week, as visiting legislators including Barragan and U.S. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publicly denounced the conditions and practices in Texas border patrol detention facilities.

“I have never been a supporter of having CBP agents be the judge and jury for these migrants,” Barragan said in an interview, referring to the decisions on who will wait in Mexico under the new Trump administration policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). “The same people are apprehending them and judging whether they are eligible for a program.”

Adding to critics’ concerns about officers’ sensitivity, the investigative news organization ProPublica reported Monday (https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-agents-joke-about-migrant-deaths-post-sexist-memes) that a private Facebook group for current and former officers mocked migrant deaths and posted other derogatory comments.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s acting secretary, Kevin McAleenan, ordered an investigation into the group and said the social media activity was “disturbing & inexcusable.”

Some former CPB officials questioned the weight of responsibility placed on employees’ shoulders amid a growing crisis at the southwest border.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former policy advisor in CBP’s office of the commissioner said CBP officers and border agents are primarily law enforcement personnel. “Why are we asking border patrol to do more?” she said, adding that the strains on the agency are lowering morale. “This is not what they signed up for.”

Border apprehensions topped 132,000 in May, their highest levels in more than a decade, but declined last month as Mexico cracks down people heading north through their country.

Changing demographics are stretching resources. Instead of mostly single Mexican men trying to evade capture, officers are increasingly dealing with a surging number of Central American families – many with very young children – turning themselves in to seek asylum in the United States.

CBP said in a statement that the El Paso sector, where lawmakers visited this week, has seen a massive increase in apprehensions and that facilities there “were not designed for long-term holding.” Officers are facing “critical challenges” moving migrants out of border patrol custody quickly, the agency said.

Some Border Patrol officers complain their duties increasingly fall outside the bounds of their training – like tending to sick children and adults in their custody.

“People are coming in unvaccinated, there are outbreaks of mumps, flu, measles, we have had flesh-eating bacteria, all these various strains of diseases,” which is putting agents themselves at risk, said Joshua Wilson, a spokesman for the San Diego border patrol union.

HIGH-STAKES DECISIONS

In late January, the Trump administration began implementing the controversial MPP program in which asylum applicants can be forced to wait for their U.S. court hearings in Mexico.

As of the end of June, 16,714 migrants had been sent back to Mexico under the MPP program according to Mexican government data, often to border cities where crime rates are high and local officials say they don’t have the capacity to handle the influx. The program is expected to be extended across the entire southwest border.

Unaccompanied minors, Mexicans and people with known physical or mental health issues are supposed to be exempt. Migrants who express fear of staying in Mexico are referred to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officer who decides if they can be taken out of the program and allowed to wait in the United States. But many do not know they can make such a claim and success is rare

Some border patrol officers also are beginning to have increased authority in a separate, high-stakes decision-making process for asylum seekers.

Migrants who are allowed to stay in the United States to pursue their asylum claims are supposed to first go through a “credible fear” screening process, to determine whether their concerns about threats in their home countries are believable.

Typically that interview is conducted by specially trained USCIS asylum officers. If they pass, they can go on to fight their case in U.S. immigration court.

Under a new pilot program, 35 U.S. border patrol officers have been trained to conduct those “credible fear” interviews as well, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of USCIS told reporters last week. He said early signs from the pilot were “positive” and that officers who have conducted the interviews – under the supervision of senior asylum officers – were handling them “capably.”

Cuccinelli said the credible fear training the officers were receiving was more extensive and thorough than any other training border patrol officers have received in their careers, including active shooter drills.

Still, it adds to the crush of other duties agents and officers handle.

“Right now we are at a critical breaking point,” said Wilson from the border patrol union.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Julie Marquis and Marla Dickerson)

U.S. to send 100 agents to Mexico border to cut delays: congresswoman

FILE PHOTO: Trucks wait in a long queue for border customs control to cross into U.S., at the Cordova-Americas border crossing bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo

By Julio-Cesar Chavez

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will send about 100 agents to the Mexico border to speed up crossing times, a U.S. congresswoman said on Thursday, as businesses grapple with trade delays after officers were redeployed to immigration duties.

The slowdowns began late last month after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to close the border if Mexico did not halt a surge of people seeking asylum in the United States.

The administration moved several hundred border agents to handle the influx of migrants, triggering long delays for cross-border traffic because of the staffing shortage.

As soon as Monday, CBP plans to send officers from the Canadian border and other parts of the country to El Paso, Texas, said Democratic U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, noting she had been informed by CBP Deputy Commissioner Robert Perez.

CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Rio Grande Valley, on the eastern edge of the border, was being considered as another point to deploy extra officers, Escobar added.

Wait times totaling hours have hit industrial trade hard.

Losses have amounted to $800,000 a day for transportation businesses in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, said the head of Mexican trucking association CANACAR, Manuel Sotelo.

Data from border business association Index Juarez showed that losses from 28 exporting firms in Ciudad Juarez that utilize the crossing total $15 million over the past week.

In El Paso, several truckers said they usually did four crossings a day and were now managing only one.

Some manufacturing plants, including automotive factories that depend on constant cross-border shipments, have turned to expensive air freight to stay on schedule.

Passenger vehicles that would normally wait up to an hour and a half to cross are now facing four-hour waits.

(Reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez in El Paso, Texas; Additional reporting by Sharay Angulo in Mexico City; Editing by Peter Cooney and Stephen Coates)