By Amanda Sakuma U.S. Customs and Border Protection boasted this week that agents used significantly less deadly force in the field over the last year, with incidents down 26 percent even as assaults against agents held steady. But the embattled agency’s steps toward reform and greater transparency omit one key detail: just how many of their altercations resulted in severe injuries or even death. Continue reading

  Is there room in the labor movement for racist, Trump-supporting cops?   Continue reading

  Lawyer says Border Patrol's impunity after Anastasio Hernández Rojas' death on camera is "miscarriage of justice" By Ben Norton The family of a longtime U.S. resident is suing the government on charges of torture and excessive force, but the case has gotten very little coverage in the American media. Continue reading

  The agency reported a drop in uses of force by about 26%, though figures show agents in more remote and least busy areas used their guns more often. By Adolfo Flores The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a drop in uses of force by about 26% last year, even as some agents in more remote sections of the Southwest border reported an increase in incidents.   Continue reading

  By Alicia Caldwell WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is asking the private sector for suggestions on camera systems that could be worn by border agents or mounted to patrol cars. The proposal to have agents wear cameras came amid concerns that border agents have been too quick to use force, including shooting people along the U.S.-Mexico border. Continue reading

  INDIANAPOLIS (April 5, 2016) – The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is calling Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border “impossible.” R. Gil Kerlikowske, the federal agency’s commissioner, met with economic and law enforcement leaders in Indianapolis Tuesday. The visit was part recruitment, part policy for Kerlikowske, who was appointed by President Barack Obama to oversee the agency and its 60,000 employees. In an interview with CBS4, Kerlikowske was critical of the Republican presidential front-runner’s immigration proposal. Continue reading

  The immigration crises in Europe and in the American Southwest have inspired powerful, polarized reactions. In this country, we’ve seen increased deportations and a groundswell of support for more fences and walls on the border. In Europe, borders have been closing, and anti-immigrant backlash has been building. There’s no easy solution to the suffering of refugees and the economic plight of many undocumented immigrants. But on both continents, some people see it as their duty to help these needy populations. This is the story of two churches trying to work together half a world apart. Marta Bernardini was walking a few feet from the tall, rusted wall that separates Nogales, Arizona, from Nogales, Mexico. But she doesn’t like to look at it. “We want to separate the people and say we are better than you,” she said, describing the feeling she believes the wall emits. “Because we are in the right side of the wall, the rich part of the wall, and you are in the poor part.” Bernardini was on the Mexican side that morning. She’s used to these kinds of divisions, just not man-made ones. Her home is on Lampedusa, an Italian island where the border is the rough, churning ocean. She’s a social worker there for migrants on behalf of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy. Now, she’s nearing the end of four months spent on these borderlands as she learns how people are helping migrants here. Continue reading

  Border Rights Groups Urge DHS to Investigate Widespread Dispossession of Belongings 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. Continue reading

  By Associated Press Houston — A former Customs and Border Protection officer in South Texas has won an appeal that overturns his murder conviction and 25-year prison sentence for the fatal shooting of a bar owner. A divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Wednesday that 37-year-old ex-agent Jose Guadalupe Elizondo is entitled to a new trial because a part of the instructions to jurors at his 2011 trial in Edinburg was improper. The court's 5-4 ruling reverses a lower appeals court decision that affirmed Elizondo's conviction. Continue reading

  By Erica Phillips A new electronic customs system is off to a rocky start, with some shippers reporting their goods held up at the U.S. border for hours. The technology, which the U.S. Customs and Borders Protection began phasing in on Thursday, is supposed to automate the filing of customs forms and transmit data gathered from shippers to nearly 50 government agencies. Continue reading