On the 243rd day of Biden’s presidency and the 244th day of a Democratically controlled Congress, US Border Patrol agents were filmed whipping Haitian migrants gathering water. Days earlier, the Biden administration vowed to increase deportation efforts targeting these same refugees
Following the Biden administrations announcement that deportation efforts would be increased, it was reported that 600 additional US Customs and Border Protection personnel were sent to this area of the border in order to facilitate a safe, humane and orderly process.
Temperatures in Del Rio have been above 100 degrees for the majority of September.
Media has been blocked by US Border Patrol from crossing back and forth between the border in order to report on the state of the refugee camp. The total number of refugees living in this camp is estimated to be around 13,000.
There have been multiple (1 2 3) calls for the Biden administration to revise federal policies related to immigration including a strong letter to administration that was signed by over a hundred different groups.
Unfortunately, abuses at the border by US officials have a long, historical legacy with the most recent spate of abuses being tracked by United We Dream (Internet Archive link). Many of these abuses occurred during Biden’s last stint in the White House, during which the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties may have vastly underreported official complaints. From the October 2015 report,
The disparity between complaints CRCL receives and complaints it reports is striking. In its FY 2014 report to Congress, CRCL reported only two “complaints opened” involving Fourth Amendment violations by CBP nationwide—the same period in which the agency received the ACLU’s complaints describing more than a dozen allegations of unlawful search and seizure and other violations by Border Patrol in Arizona alone. In its FY 2013 report, CRCL disclosed zero Fourth Amendment complaints involving CBP, nationwide. For FY 2012, CRCL reported only three such complaints.
By contrast, the records provided to the ACLU to date—representing just half of the records requested and only two of Border Patrol’s 20 sectors—describe at least 134 complaints recorded by DHS oversight agencies describing potential Fourth Amendment violations, including numerous false canine alerts resulting in prolonged detention and warrantless searches. Complete statistics for all 20 Border Patrol sectors, if made publicly available, would reveal many additional abuse allegations that are never publicly disclosed.
Part of this may be due to a culture which doesn’t prioritize accountability as much as it does racism. The report detailing issues with CBP policies should be familiar to Biden with there having been an internal review by an independent board of CBP policies in 2013.
In better news, Kamala Harris was reported as having recently toured a ‘border spot’ 800 miles away from what the Border Patrol union representative said was a ‘hot zone.’ It is, however, only 424 miles away from Del Rio, where these most recent abuses were documented.
Additionally, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki issued a strong, moral condemnation of these actions, saying “I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate. I don’t have the full context [but] I can’t imagine what context would make that appropriate.”