When she took her baby to the pediatrician, she had no idea what she would experience when she returned to El Paso: an agent felt her private parts and threatened to take her son away. She is one of the victims of abuse on the US-Mexico border, according to a report.
On August 5, 2021, this woman went to Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico, to take the doctor to her son Nathan, five months.
Upon her return to El Paso, Texas, an officer asked for her documentation and told her that her son did not look like her, she says in one of the testimonies included in the 2022 report of the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR). Disclosed on Thursday.
“He asked me,” How do we check what your child is? We would have to do a DNA test and that would take a week.” “That’s why he said that they were going to take my son to a place of detention. I asked him where (…) he told me mockingly:” to a cage “”.
Against the wall
“One of the agents (…) took my son away. The other female agent inspected me thoroughly. She put me against the wall and told me to lower my pants to my knees. She physically searched my entire body. She put her hands under From my bra and touched my parts ahead and from behind, “he describes SOD, identified as the other victims for initials.
“We found a very worrying pattern of body and cavity searches in women. All the documented cases were false positives,” that is, false suspicions, said Fernando García, director of BNHR, at a press conference.
Another woman received similar treatment. “He yelled at me to put my hands up, put me against the wall and started inspecting me and touching my private parts. He hit my left thigh and yelled at me to spread my legs wider. He asked if there was anything in between, referring to my vagina, and I said no,” he says.
From October 9 to November 9, 2021, the organization spoke to 4,000 people at 80 booths set up from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to San Elizario, on the eastern edge of El Paso County, at international bridges that serve as entrance, supermarkets, associations, restaurants, markets, churches, parks…
Although border patrol cases have been reduced, “a systemic pattern of impunity under which law enforcement interacts with border residents” was detected, the report said.
Of the 25 documented cases, 16 involve federal immigration agencies at the border and “illustrate very troubling violations of civil rights, human rights, and the violation of personal dignity.”
It knows very well Jesus Francisco Dávila, 71 years old. One day he confused his passport with the Mexican elector card and the agent “he had vented (…) and fell back.”
“Most of the time I have had very kind agents, agents who love their work and this time he was quite rude to me,” Dávila said at a press conference.
One of the main problems, according to the organization, is the systematic use of a second inspection “without apparent or reasonable suspicion”.
They prefer to be deported
María Ávila has seven children, four of which suffer a congenital ocular disease. Once an officers of the border patrol forced her to get off the bus with her children and she retained several hours, so she could not take them to the hospital. Another day she put an electronic bracelet on her husband’s ankle so she could go to her doctor’s appointment.
The report denounces the application of Title 42 to expel a long-term border resident from the country, when it is only applicable to undocumented migrants due to the covid-19 pandemic.
Sometimes the immigration and customs control service (ICE) has come to resort to bullying to enter a house without a court order.
The report highlights the case of a woman who “was handcuffed, insulted her, shouted, threatened her and forced her to declare himself guilty.”
The BNHR also denounces the situation in the detention centers for unaccompanied minor migrants. An anonymous worker at the Fort Bliss facility says that children eat raw food and must dry off with their clothes due to lack of towels. “They are so afraid that they want them to deport them.”