This video was produced by a startup company promising to develop a “Wall of Drones”. This Wall of Drones had the capacity if produced to launch electronic control devices (e.g.Tasers) at migrants in remote parts of the U.S. Mexico border. Fortunately, this wall of drones device has not been produced, due to the pressure from immigrant rights immigrants. It would have increased human rights violations against immigrants.
In late October the Human Right Watch released a report, Abuses by US Border Officials. According to this report there have been over 160 internal reports of misconduct and abuse of asylum seekers at the hands of US officials.
During 2016 and 2021 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, Border Patrol agents, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials committed these abuses.
Human Rights Watch obtained documents after litigation under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It includes allegations of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse, due process violations, harsh detention conditions, denial of medical care, and discriminatory treatment at or near the border.
In one example, the records show that a supervisor in the San Francisco Asylum Office communicated the following internally at DHS: “AO [asylum officer] [redacted] brought a serious matter to our attention just now: one of the applicants she interviewed today has a young child who was sexually molested by someone we believe to be a CBP or Border Patrol Officer.
They were apprehended by Border Patrol, sent to the Ice Box [a border holding cell], then this occurred: the young girl was forced to undress and touched inappropriately by a guard in the Ice Box wearing green, with the nametag [redacted].
Clara Long, associate US director at Human Rights Watch said, “The Biden administration should not be making excuses for failures by DHS and its components, but rather – together with Congress – taking urgent steps to ensure that people victimized by US border and immigration agents, including on the basis of race, have access to justice and that this persistent pattern of abuse and misconduct ends.”
Here’s the link to this important report. We cannot rest until these atrocities stop and those guilty be prosecuted.
