By Elise Foley WASHINGTON — Bernardo Hernández Rojas’ brother, Anastasio, died in 2010 after border patrol agents used a Taser on him and struck him with a baton repeatedly as he cried out for help — caught on tape by witnesses — and took him into custody for crossing the border illegally from Mexico. His family’s efforts to get justice for his death have been unsuccessful. Their civil suit has been pending for years and in November, the Department of Justiceclosed its investigation without pursuing federal charges against any of the agents involved. Continue reading

  By Brian Bennett and Joseph Tanfani The family of a Mexican man who died after he was shocked with a Taser and hit by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents has asked an international panel to consider whether his human rights were violated. The family of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas, who died of a heart attack days after a confrontation at the San Ysidro border station in San Diego in May 2010, has asked the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate the human rights record of U.S. border agents and customs officers. Continue reading

  By Sukjong Hong    Christian Ramirez remembers what life was like before the border wall went up in San Diego. Growing up in San Ysidro, a neighborhood on the city’s southwestern corner, he regularly crossed into Mexico to pick up tacos and bring them back for picnics at Friendship Park, a small coastal area bisected by the border. But after 9/11, new security measures fortified the border wall and extended the barrier into the ocean. “An embrace at that part of the border has been reduced to pinkies touching each other at the border wall,” he said. Now the park, which used to host bi-national religious masses, Christmas celebrations, and family reunions, is locked except for a few hours each weekend, during which federal agents monitor the crowd and people search through the metal grating for a glimpse of a loved one’s face on the other side. Continue reading

  Family of Anastasio H. Rojas takes Struggle for Justice Before Inter-American Commission Washington D.C. -  Today, the family of Anastasio Hernández Rojas will take an unprecedented step towards justice. The Hernández Rojas family, along with international law experts from the University of California, Berkeley International Human Rights Law Clinic and advocates with the Southern Border Communities Coalition will file a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington D.C. The petition follows six years of stalled investigations and failure to hold U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents accountable for killing Anastasio. Continue reading

  By Guillermo Cantor 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 ago, yielded 19 findings and 62 recommendations. According to CBP’s statement, “CBP concurs with the vast majority of recommendations [and] a workgroup is actively implementing and addressing the recommendations through improved policies, procedures, training, processes and reporting requirements.” Continue reading

  By Nancy Montoya A high degree of corruption in the U.S. Border Patrol presents a national security threat, found an independent task force. After 9/11, the U.S. Border Patrol doubled in size from around 10,000 to more than 20,000 agents. And while money was appropriated for the expansion, very few resources were allocated to the oversight of those agents. Continue reading

  By Harald Bauder International borders have become deadly barriers, rivaled only by war and major natural disasters in the number of fatalities they produce. The consortium ‘The Migrants’ Files’ has recorded more than 3,000 deadly incidents between 2000 and early 2016, during which an estimated 32,000 men, women, and children died or went missing while trying to reach Europe. In Australia the ‘Border Deaths database’, maintained by the Border Crossing Observatory at Monash University, has counted almost 2,000 deaths in the same period. Still more migrants have died in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, and in the jungles of southeast Asia. Nobody knows exactly how many people have died, because many deaths are unseen or undocumented. Continue reading

  By Alex Perala Vision-Box technology continues to play an important role in the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency’s trialing of biometric border control, the company has announced. In a statement, the company says it’s the provider of “the core biometric technology” used in the CBP’s JFK International Airport project. Continue reading

By Paul Nyhan Families too often are divided by U.S. immigration policies, but on a small patch of land that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border, separated families can reunite, at least for a few hours. The patch of land is actually two parks, Playas de Tijuana, in Mexico, and Friendship Park directly across from it in San Diego County. Continue reading

  By Kimball Taylor A house in the La Libertad neighborhood of Tijuana relies on the corrugated iron border fence erected under President Clinton for its back wall. The engineers who designed the fence in 1994 left three feet of American soil on the Mexican side, to allow for repairs without the need for diplomatic agreements. That means this home's inhabitants can pass freely between two nations under one roof. The matriarch jokes that, with the way her bed is positioned, she dreams in America while her feet remain squarely in Mexico. Continue reading