Stop border patrol from looting deportees

“At least they should have left us with an ID,” said Javier*, his eyes filled with fear. Stranded nearly 2,000 miles from home, he had been robbed of his money, passport and cell phone. Who stole his belongings? The U.S. government.

Imagine finding yourself in an unknown place with none of your personal effects, no phone, no cash and no idea how you’re going to get home. This happens to people every day in border cities in Northern Mexico.

{mosads}Last week, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico joined human rights defenders from both the United States and Mexico to urge the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to investigate the cases of 26 people deported by the U.S. government without their personal belongings. Their cases, in just one sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, form part of a larger trend of “systemic dispossession” — the methodical confiscation of private property by our government.

Over the past year, my colleagues at the Programa de Defensa e Incidencia Binacional (PDIB), a human rights organization based in Ciudad Juárez, interviewed hundreds of people who were recently deported to Mexico.

Their findings are deeply troubling: the reason that so many people were deported with no belongings was that the U.S. government had robbed them of what they had.

U.S. agents, most of them from the U.S. Border Patrol, took people’s money — in some cases, hundreds of dollars from a single person. Agents took photo IDs and legal documents. They threw away cell phones, clothing, family rosaries and medicine. Agents even took — and failed to return — documents that demonstrate the persecution suffered by asylum seekers.

The experiences of dispossession documented in PDIB interviews are consistent with the findings of a 2013 border civil rights study by researchers at the University of Arizona. In that study, people in the El Paso Border Patrol sector suffered the highest rates of dispossession at the hands of U.S. government agents. Eighty-five percent of people apprehended from that sector, and 65 percent deported from that sector, reported that the government took and failed to return at least one of their belongings.

Dispossession is not an intractable problem. In late February, DHS directly addressed dispossession in a series of local repatriation arrangements with the government of Mexico. In those arrangements, DHS and Mexico agreed that the government “should take all feasible steps to ensure that property, valuables and money retained are available for return to the rightful owner at the time of initial release from DHS custody.”

Regardless of one’s feelings about immigration, we can all agree that robbing people and abandoning them in  an unknown place — taking  their hard-earned money, cell phones or photo ID — isn’t just wrong, it’s cruel. U.S. agents are stranding people in border cities where they have no familial or community ties and are without the means to find a job, communicate with and receive a wire transfer from family, or even rent a room.

We as Americans need to stop the wholesale robbery of people by our government and demand that U.S. Border Patrol agents treat noncitizens with the same dignity and humanity that we would want for ourselves. DHS must investigate and change its policies regarding the retention and return of personal belongings, and it must hold accountable the agents who abuse these policies.

Gaubeca is Director, Regional Center for Border Rights, ACLU New Mexico