Illegal immigrants coming across the Texas border from Mexico face continued abuses at the hands of U.S. immigration authorities, according to a recent report issued by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
According to the report, "Sealing Our Borders: The Human Toll," refugees (and those perceived to be refugees, including U.S. citizens) crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are subjected to a number of various types of abuse - including psychological, verbal, and physical abuse (such as shootings, beatings, and sexual assaults). And U.S. Border Patrol agents are responsible for most of the abuses, says the report.
Released in late February, the report is the result of a two-year investigative project (from May 1989 to May 1991) conducted by the AFSC's Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project (ILEMP), based in Houston. ILEMP also released reports detailing such abuses in 1988 and 1989.
"The abuses we've reported continue to be serious," ILEMP Project Director Maria Jiminez told Sojourners. "Hopefully, this report will highlight the need to take this issue more seriously and will lead to more humane enforcement of immigration law."
The INS responded by categorically denying the abuses documented in the report, dismissing the charges as "unfounded."
The American Friends Service Committee "has never said one good thing about the U.S. Border Patrol in its history," INS chief spokesman Duke Austin told USA Today. "So it doesn't come to me as shocking that, for the third time, they've come out with a report alleging abuses."
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission appears to be taking the reports of abuses more seriously. It scheduled hearings on the alleged abuses in El Paso, Texas, sometime in April.
But it will take more than hearings, and even new guidelines for immigration authorities, for the abuses to stop, according to Jiminez and other refugee advocates. As long as immigration into this country is viewed primarily as a law enforcement issue rather than a socio-economic problem, the abuses will continue.
There is other disturbing news regarding the U.S. government's role along the U.S.-Mexico border. Recently released FBI files detail a secret investigation of refugee advocates by the agency during the early 1980s.
According to heavily censored documents obtained by journalist Robert Kahn through a Freedom of Information Act request filed last fall, the FBI centered its investigation on the Harlingen, Texas, law firm Proyecto Libertad and its founder, immigration attorney Lisa Brodyaga. But perhaps the most unsettling discovery is that some of the information collected from Salvadorans' asylum applications was given to other U.S. government agencies, despite public INS assurances that such information is kept confidential due to the refugees' fear of persecution.
"Many of the techniques described in the memos are reminiscent of the intrusive violations of First Amendment protections that the FBI promised to cease after reforms during the 1970s," wrote Kahn in the March 13 issue of The Texas Observer.
According to Kahn, the unclassified memos also revealed that the FBI investigated religious groups opposed to U.S. policy in Central America.
Chris Herman assisted with research.
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