Abuses
Two People Died in Immigration Detention This Week
For more than a decade, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been criticized for the inadequate medical care available in its detention facilities, which has had deadly repercussions. This week, two more people died while in ICE custody—Jose Leonardo Lemus Rajo, 23, of El Salvador and Igor Zyazin,… Read More
Berks Detention Center Employee Convicted of Sexual Assault of Young Honduran Mother
A judge in Pennsylvania this week sentenced Daniel Sharkey, a 41-year-old former counselor at the Berks County Residential Center, to six to twenty three months of jail time. Sharkey previously worked at the county-run detention center for children and their parents. His sentence came down after he pled guilty… Read More
Custom and Border Protection Use–of-Force Data Raises More Questions
Use-of-force by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 declined more than 26 percent compared with the previous year, according to statistics released last week by CBP. During FY 2015, which ended in September of last year, CBP reported 756 uses-of-force, down from the… Read More
Ashcroft v. Abbasi (formerly Turkman v. Ashcroft) – U.S. Supreme Court
The Council, along with the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG), is seeking to preserve federal court review of damages actions brought by noncitizens for abuse of authority by immigration agents. In actions brought under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), the government routinely moves to dismiss these cases on a variety of jurisdictional grounds, including by arguing that INA § 242(g) bars the court’s review of damages claims in any case involving removal procedures, and that a remedy under Bivens is not available in immigration-related actions. In essence, the government is attempting to deprive those who have been harmed by immigration agents of any remedy in federal court. Read More
Avalos-Palma v. United States – District Court for the District of New Jersey
The American Immigration Council and National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG) are seeking to preserve federal court review of damages actions brought by noncitizens for abuse of authority by immigration agents. Read More
Customs and Border Protection Releases Independent Review of Its Complaints System
As part of its announced efforts to become more transparent and accountable, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just released the results of a review of its processes for handling allegations of employee misconduct. The review, which was conducted by an independent consulting firm and completed four months… Read More
National Wave of Complaints Highlights Rampant Abuse by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Dire Need for Reform
Washington, D.C. – Over the past week, an alliance of immigration groups, private attorneys and a law school clinic joined forces in filing complaints targeting abuses by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) across the country. Ten damages cases have been filed alleging unlawful CBP conduct in northern and southern… Read More
Hieleras (Iceboxes) in the Rio Grande Valley Sector
These accounts reveal the dehumanizing conditions to which these women were subjected while in Border Patrol custody. Read More
Indictment of Border Patrol Agent for Murder Provides Some Much-Needed Accountability
Justice was served on September 23, when a federal grand jury indicted Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz for the second-degree murder of 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodríguez in Nogales, Mexico, in October of 2012. Rodríguez was shot at least eight times. Seven of the bullets hit him in… Read More
New Report Depicts Ongoing Abuses by Border Patrol
Deported migrants suffer a range of abuses at the hands of Custom and Border Patrol agents, according to a new Kino Border Initiative (KBI) report. The report relies on original surveys of Mexican migrants that were deported to Nogales, Mexico during the second half of 2014 and the first… Read More
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