By Steven Luke The man who represents all of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in the San Diego area says his men and woman want body cameras, as soon as possible. Terence Shigg, the local chapter president for The National Border Patrol Council and a longtime agent himself, says the problem has been a lack of collaboration between management and day to day agents. Continue reading

  By: Pedro Rios In 2010, Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, a husband and father of five, was handcuffed, tortured and brutally beaten to death by 12 Border Patrol agents at the San Ysidro border crossing in California. The horrifying incident witnessed by dozens of people exposed a systemic problem with the nation’s largest law enforcement agency: that Border Patrol agents operate with impunity, without meaningful accountability, and in complete opaqueness. The abuses by agents are widespread and well documented. Since January of 2010 more than46 people have died as a result of an interaction with the Border Patrol. This past June, a woman was killed when Border Patrol agents intentionally rammed their boat into another boat carrying 20 people. In 2012, a Border Patrol agent shot 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez repeatedly in the back before he died. He was on his way to a local market to buy food staples in the Mexican city of Nogales, along the border with Arizona. Continue reading

  By EFEUSA Un comité de la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza evaluará a partir de este jueves la investigación realizada tras la muerte del mexicano Anastasio Hernández hace casi seis años después de recibir una brutal golpiza por parte de oficiales de inmigración. La Junta Nacional de Análisis de Uso de Fuerza (NUFRB), quien revisará el caso, fue establecida en diciembre de 2014 por el comisionado de Aduanas, Gil Kerlikowske, como una medida para analizar todo altercado en que agentes detonen un arma, así como incidentes en que el uso de fuerza resulte en heridas de gravedad o en la muerte. Continue reading

  The board is set to review the 2010 death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, who died after a confrontation with border agents at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. By Tatiana Sanchez U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Use of Force Review Board today will look into the case of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, who died in 2010 after being beaten and shocked with a Taser during a confrontation with border agents. Hernandez Rojas was apprehended at the San Ysidro Port of Entry allegedly for attempting to cross the border illegally. He died a few days after his arrest. Continue reading

  Responding to calls for accountability, CBP implements Use of Force Review Board Washington D.C./Southern Border Region - This Thursday, March 10, the Use of Force Review Board (UFRB), convened by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), will review the investigation of CBP's lethal beating of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas. Maria Puga, widow of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, and Christian Ramirez, Director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, will be available for comment in person, by phone or Skype today, March 9 between 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PST at the office of Alliance San Diego: 4443 30th St. San Diego, CA. Continue reading

  By Samantha Tatro, Eric Tucker and Julie Watson The family of a Mexican man shocked and killed by U.S. border authorities six years ago with a stun gun has a renewed hope for justice now that a review board is looking into the way authorities handled the case. The 2010 death of 42-year-old Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas raised complaints of excessive force from the then-president of Mexico and others, and investigators with the Justice Department examined the case for evidence of a civil rights violation. Continue reading

  By: Rob O'Dell TUCSON— The murder trial for the Border Patrol agent who shot through the border fence and killed a Mexican teenager is now set for November, after being delayed three times since late 2015. U.S. District Court Judge Raner C. Collins set the trial date for Nov. 7, the day before Election Day. The goal was to set a realistic date for both sides — allowing the Border Patrol agent's lawyer Sean Chapman time to prepare for the trial while also giving the government a set date to bring in witnesses from two countries. Continue reading

  By: Sarah Tory I am lost before I’ve even started. It’s December and I’m in Nogales, Arizona, determined to re-trace the footsteps of the first Spanish colonizing expedition across what is now the border between the United States and Mexico. Nearly 250 years ago, in 1775, a young Spanish commander led a group of mostly poor villagers — men, women and children — together with more than 1,000 horses and cattle from the Mexican state of Sinaloa northwards across a vast desert to the far reaches of the Empire in what was then called Alta California. Like Yosemite or Yellowstone, or the Oregon Trail, the expedition’s route is part of the national park system. It should be easy to find. But the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail has no official starting point — at least not one that’s marked. Instead, there is a giant steel fence equipped with motion sensors, and the ever-vigilant eyes of the U.S. Border Patrol. Continue reading

  By: Sarah Childress Day after day, a white van pulled up at an egg farm in central Ohio and unloaded several young Guatemalans, most of them just teenagers. They were forced to work 12-hour shifts six or seven days a week loading and unloading crates of chickens, cleaning their coops and clipping their beaks. At night, they bedded down in unheated, rat-infested trailers without working toilets, kept down under threat of violence by traffickers. The young migrants had been apprehended in the United States, then handed over to the traffickers, who posed as close friends and family members willing to take them in while they awaited their immigration hearings. Continue reading

  By Andrew Becker U.S. Border Patrol agents had “an astonishing pattern” of shooting people who threw rocks at them under a vague use-of-force policy that led to the “highly predictable” death of a man along the U.S.-Mexico border in California, according to a law enforcement expert witness’ review of a fatal shooting. In a report completed this week, a former Baltimore police commissioner and Justice Department official found a Border Patrol policy allowing agents to shoot their firearms based on the threat of a thrown object “highly suspect.”   Continue reading