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.
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.
On February 2, 2016, Border Patrol agents near El Paso, Texas, took 12,449 Mexican pesos (the equivalent of US$673.48), a voter card, and other items from José Lorenzo Reyes López. The agents failed to properly inventory the money and failed to return any of his belongings before the government deported him 21 days later.
On July 21, 2015, Border Patrol agents near Sierra Blanca, Texas, took cash, cholesterol and kidney medications, jewelry, and religious items from 45-year-old Perla García. Ms. García begged the agents not to throw away her medications, but they refused. The agents also refused to provide Ms. García with medical attention to address her chronic cholesterol and kidney conditions—conditions that a physician had diagnosed as requiring daily medications to manage. On September 1, 2015, the U.S. government deported Ms. García to Ciudad Juárez with nothing.
After Border Patrol officials took a 58-year-old woman's jewelry and money in the summer of 2015, officials at a facility in Otero County, New Mexico, incorrectly advised the woman that she would have to wait until she was deported to reclaim her belongings. Believing the government agents, the woman waited. When she was deported to Ciudad Juárez on July 8, 2015, she learned that she could not in fact reclaim her belongings because more than 30 days had passed between her arrest and deportation. Pursuant to CBP's 30-day destruction policy, the woman's belongings were presumably destroyed, contrary to the officials' incorrect advice.
The complaint urges that DHS oversight agencies should promptly investigate the cases of abuse documented in the complaint. The complaint also recommends that DHS reform its policies and practices to ensure that all belongings are returned to migrants at the moment of their release or repatriation, consistent with repatriation agreements that DHS and the government of Mexico signed in February 2016.