Border Patrol Agents Beat Migrant Children, Threatened Them With Sexual Assault, Report Finds
Migrant children under the care of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency were allegedly beaten and threatened with sexual assault, a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union and International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School has determined.
The report was based on more than 30,000 pages of documents obtained through an open records request and covered a period between 2009 and 2014, Newsweek noted. It found a number of instances of abuse based on the claims of unaccompanied minors who had been taken into the custody of the agency. Before the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy that led to children being separated from their parents and taken into custody, the Obama administration would detain children who arrived at the U.S. border unaccompanied by family members.
The reports found that Border Patrol agents allegedly kicked a child in the ribs, punched another young child in the head, and denied medical care to a pregnant teenager, who later had a stillbirth. In another instance, agents reportedly forced a 16-year-old girl to spread her legs for an aggressive body search.
The report concluded that the Border Patrol agency was “marked by brutality and lawlessness” and called for a full investigation into the allegations.
“All human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their immigration status—and children, in particular, deserve special protection,” said Mitra Ebadolahi, ACLU Border Litigation Project staff attorney. “The misconduct demonstrated in these records is breathtaking, as is the government’s complete failure to hold officials who abuse their power accountable.”
There have been a string of other allegations against Border Patrol agents into the Trump administration. A new report from the Arizona Republic detailed an allegation that a U.S. Border Patrol agent named Matthew Bowen ran his truck into a Guatemalan migrant and referred to apprehended migrants as “subhuman s**t” and “savages.”
Bowen’s incident is under active investigation as are his text messages with alleged threats against migrants and hopes that President Donald Trump would let them “take off the gloves” and treat migrants more harshly. Bowen is set to go on trial in August.
Border patrol reports sixth child death in six months after none the previous decade https://t.co/UosY1jkxeW
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) May 25, 2019
Borer Patrol has also come under fire for a string of migrant deaths in recent months, including the sixth migrant child to die in custody in a matter of a few months. Prior to that, it had been more than a decade since a migrant died while in Border Patrol custody.
