Adam Isacson

Defense, security, borders, migration, and human rights in Latin America and the United States. May not reflect my employer’s consensus view.

Human Rights

Border Patrol is Once Again Keeping Asylum Seekers Outdoors, Between the Border Wall Layers, South of San Diego

From the Tijuana daily El Imparcial.

Border Patrol is once again keeping hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants outdoors, without even bathroom facilities, for one to two days between the double layers of the border wall between San Diego and Tijuana.

The last time we saw this practice, in May, it generated an outcry, including a letter from Democratic members of Congress and a complaint filed by the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

Now it’s happening again. From California Public Radio:

The camp is in San Ysidro, between the primary and secondary border walls. Migrants there sleep outside with little protection from the elements. There are no bathrooms, leaving men, women and children to relieve themselves in nearby bushes.

…Customs and Border Patrol personnel give the migrants water bottles, cheese and crackers. Everything else comes from volunteers in San Diego and Tijuana, according to several migrants interviewed by KPBS.

Volunteers provided fruits, blankets, medicine, diapers, menstrual pads and generators to charge people’s phones.

…Migrants interviewed in the camp Tuesday told KPBS that they were not free to leave the camp whenever they wished. All of them had wristbands given to them by CBP personnel. Many of the people in the camp want to pursue asylum claims in the United States.

Volunteers told California Public Radio that the migrants are spending between 24 and 36 hours in the camp before agents pick them up for processing. In the meantime, they must relieve themselves in bushes between the fence lines.

Border Patrol claims that they are facing capacity challenges. These challenges are certain to increase as numbers of migrants, many of them asylum seekers, have been growing since July and may continue to grow into the fall. If that happens, and if Border Patrol is allowed to keep using the space between the walls as an open-air pen, then the wait times will get longer.

Many of the asylum seekers have given up on waiting for the “CBP One” smartphone app to cough up an appointment. Enrique Lucero, the director of Tijuana’s municipal migrant affairs office, told the local El Imparcial “there are between 5,500 and 6,000 migrants in city government-recognized shelters, who are waiting to obtain a CBP One appointment to begin their asylum process in a way that is safe and ordered by the United States.”

At the San Ysidro port of entry, CBP is taking 385 CBP One appointments per day—16 times smaller than the officially known portion of Tijuana’s migrant shelter population—plus maybe 10 more “walk-ups,” according to an August 31 report from the University of Texas’s Strauss Center.

88 Percent of 2022 Environmental Defender Killings Happened in the Americas

In its latest annual report, the UK-based group Global Witness counted 177 murders of environmental defenders worldwide last year. And 156 of them happened in Latin America.

Colombia tops the global ranking with 60 murders in yet another dire year for the country. This is almost double the number of killings compared to 2021, when 33 defenders lost their lives. Once again, Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, small-scale farmers and environmental activists have been viciously targeted.

In 2022, voters in Brazil and Colombia elected leaders who lean hard into pro-environment rhetoric. That may not mean daily life is any safer for those countries’ beleaguered communities trying to defend forests and other resources. Next year’s numbers, though, absolutely must go down. This is inexcusable.

Pattern of “impunity” increases migrants’ risk of abuse by U.S. agents, report says

Emily Bregel published a terrific story at the Arizona Daily Star about our August 2 report, with the Kino Border Initiative, about abuse and accountability at Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol.

Bregel got comment about our findings from CBP, former CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus, and the offices of Rep. Raúl Grijalva and Sen. Mark Kelly, among others.

And she had a great conversation with my co-author on the report, Zoe Martens of the Kino Border Initiative:

At Kino, Martens offered to help the man file a complaint about the violation of his right to request asylum. She explained he likely wouldn’t get justice in his case, but that documenting it could help improve the system for others. The man quickly agreed, saying, “Don’t worry — we’re used to lack of justice in our own country,” Martens recalled.

The comment stuck with her.

“These are our U.S. accountability systems. I think we’d assume they are more effective than in places where we know impunity is widespread,” as in Mexico, she said. “We must, and we can, do better.”

Highly recommended.

Confusing accounts of the death of a migrant child on a Texas state bus

A three-year-old Venezuelan girl died on August 10 aboard one of the buses that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has contracted to take asylum-seeking migrants from his state’s border areas to cities run by Democratic mayors—in the case of this bus, to Chicago.

On September 6, the coroner of Marion County, Illinois, where Jismary Alejandra Barboza Gonzalez’s bus was passing through when she died of “bacterial Shigella Flexneri Colitis and Aspiration Pneumonia,” put out a statement about the event.

Juxtaposing that document with the August 11 account of Texas’s Department of Emergency Management shows a confusing discrepancy about the child’s symptoms when Texas officials placed her and her parents aboard a bus. See the highlighted text below.

August 11, 2023 Texas document entitled "TDEM Statement On Death of Border Bus Passenger" highlighted text: "After being processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the City of Brownsville, each bus passenger underwent a temperature check and was asked if they had medical conditions that may require medical assistance. Following this check, prior to boarding, no passenger presented with a fever or medical concerns."

September 6, 2023 Marion County Coroner's Office press release highlight: "The child had reportedly begun experiencing mild symptoms and began feeling ill as the family boarded the bus in Brownsville. At that point, she had a low-grade fever only, and was allowed to board the bus. During the trip, her symptoms worsened, and developed into vomiting, diarrhea, lack of appetite, and dehydration."

Mexico Now Deploys More Soldiers than Police for Public Security

“The Mexican government is giving more and more power to institutions known precisely for their lack of transparency, and it is doing so without adequate civilian controls, in a process that will be difficult to reverse,” warns a report published today by my colleagues in WOLA’s Mexico Program.

Ernesto López Portillo of the Universidad Iberoamericana Citizen Security Program, writing at Elefante Blanco, echoed those concerns:

The total operational deployment of military personnel for public security in 2023 exceeds the total number of state and municipal police. The news is unprecedented in contemporary Mexico.

…The total operational deployment of military personnel for public security already amounts to 261,644, while state and municipal police forces total 251,760.

At the Border Chronicle – Impunity in the Borderlands: A Conversation with WOLA’s Adam Isacson

A real honor to be invited to do a Q&A with one of my top can’t-miss-an-article websites about what’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Border Chronicle, and its co-founder Todd Miller, author of some essential books about border security and human rights.

We talk in depth about WOLA’s recent report, with the Kino Border Initiative, on CBP and Border Patrol abuse and accountability at the U.S.-Mexico border. Why we did the report, what it found, what we recommend, and what happens next. Read it at the Border Chronicle.

Saw blades. In a river. In the 21st century.

This part of the Texas border story needs more amplification:

“There are serrated metal plates that look like circular saw blades between each buoy.”

Photo caption in linked article:

"Swimming under the barrier is not an option. It’s anchored to the shallow water with thick cables and concrete bases. And there are serrated metal plates that look like circular saw blades between each buoy to deter anyone from climbing over it."

Who puts SAW BLADES in the middle of a fast-flowing river navigated by civilians, in an area where many people, including children and families, attempt to cross and often drown?

From Texas Public Radio.

It’s not the agents, it’s the circumstances

Some people who don’t read our new report about CBP/Border Patrol human rights violations might view it as an attack on U.S. agents as people.

Wrong. The problem is the circumstances in which agents work, and the incentives that come with them. That’s where we have a lot of work to do.

New report: “Abuses at the U.S.- Mexico Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights”

I’m pleased and relieved to publish a report that I’ve been working on for months with colleagues at the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales. It’s a good one. It’s long—but that’s because we’ve packed it with vivid examples and a ton of policy recommendations.

My work in the past few years has documented a ton of human rights violations carried out by U.S. federal border law enforcement agencies. It’s a problem. But I’m reluctant to blame most Border Patrol agents and CBP officers themselves. They work in an environment in which complaints and allegations of bad behavior usually go nowhere. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) accountability system is so dysfunctional that there’s little probability of consequences for human rights abuse.

Today’s report, “Abuses at the U.S.- Mexico Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights,” documents the extent of the problem, explains how DHS’s accountability system is supposed to work, explains why and when it usually fails, and then offers more than 40 recommendations.

Please give it a look. The whole 20,000-word beast is out in web and PDF formats, plus briefer, heavily abridged versions as PDFs in English and Spanish.

Here’s the executive summary, from the report’s main page:

A U.S.-Mexico border that is well governed and that also treats migrants and asylum seekers humanely can go hand in hand and should not be seen as an unattainable aspiration. For this to happen, U.S. government personnel who abuse human rights or violate professional standards, must be held to account within a reasonable amount of time and victims must receive justice.

Right now, at the U.S.-Mexico border, this rarely happens.

  • Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal government’s largest civilian law enforcement agency, has a persistent problem of human rights abuse without accountability. Many, if not most, CBP officers, and agents in CBP’s Border Patrol agency are professionals who seek to follow best practices. However, the frequency and severity of abuse allegations indicate that a substantial number of officers and agents don’t meet that standard. Further, the record suggests that existing investigations are flawed and incomplete, while disciplinary procedures are not credible enough to change their behavior.
  • This report gives numerous examples of alleged abuse, as well as insubordinate or politicized behavior since 2020. Some of the cases are severe, involving misuse of force or even loss of life. Many other examples of cruelty and victimization take place on a daily basis, such as  unprovoked violence during arrests, abusive language, denial of food or medical attention, family separations, non-return of documents and valuables, dangerous deportations, racial profiling, and falsifying migration paperwork. The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) keeps a regularly updated database documenting these abuses.
  • The investigations of many of these allegations would not take place without the work of outside actors like human rights defenders, journalists, whistleblowers and the victims themselves. Investigations can begin in two ways. Some—often, the most serious cases—start at U.S. government investigators’ own initiative, especially if the site of the abuse is a crime scene. Many others require outside actors to take the first step. Without their initiative, most such cases would never be investigated at all—and, as this report shows, many still don’t get investigated.
  • For a victim or advocate seeking to make a complaint and achieve redress, the accountability process is bewildering, opaque, and slow-moving. Right now, outside efforts to gain accountability for abuse must go through a convoluted system that has been cobbled together in the 20 years since the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) founding. Four agencies with overlapping responsibilities handle complaints and pass cases between each other. All suffer from personnel and other capacity shortfalls, and some have insufficient power to make their recommendations stick.
  • There are several frequent “failure points” where cases commonly lead nowhere, ” leaving victims without justice and harming the credibility of the DHS accountability process. In its accompaniment of migrant victims who come from CBP custody to its shelter in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) often sees complaints go nowhere. Cases get entered into a database without further action. They get closed because of ongoing litigation, even about general topics, or because “policy was not violated.” Cases get forwarded to other agencies, then nothing happens. Sometimes, there is no response at all. This report’s second section documents painful examples of abuses suffered and what this inability to get past “failure points” looks like, including to victims—some of whom are deported without ever speaking to an investigator.
  • The status quo is unsustainable. Strengthening accountability will require action from many quarters. The way ahead involves improving the complaints process, investigations, discipline, congressional oversight, and cultural change. WOLA and KBI researchers drew on our experience, on many conversations with advocates and officials, and on extensive reading of existing literature to pull together more than 40 recommendations. Among them:
    • The complaints process: it is urgent to improve personnel capacity to reduce caseloads, to ease intakes, to offer real-time feedback to complainants about the status of their cases, to inform about resulting recommendations, and to explain why investigations were terminated.
    • Investigations: it is crucial to relieve complainants of the burden of knowing which of four agencies to complain to, to stop the DHS Inspector General (OIG) from freezing investigations by holding on to cases without acting, to improve agencies’ ability to handle complaints with multiple allegations, to build up staffing, to deploy and use more body-worn cameras, to ensure that victims are interviewed, and to make top-level management changes at the OIG.
    • Discipline: it is vital to strengthen CBP’s use of force standard to “necessary and proportionate,” to make it more difficult to overrule investigators’ disciplinary recommendations in human rights cases, to get officials in the chain of command out of discipline decisions, and to empower the National Use of Force Review Board to issue quicker, tougher decisions.
    • Congressional oversight: legislators and their staff need to carry out more hearings, issue more written inquiries, and add more reporting requirements about accountability, while passing legislation to clarify oversight agencies’ jurisdictions and increase their funding.
    • Cultural change: key steps include getting the Border Patrol Union out of human rights and other misconduct cases involving members of the public, taking stronger measures on sexual harassment and bolstering the recruitment of women, protecting whistleblowers, closing the current loophole allowing racial profiling, and taking Border Patrol agents out of asylum processing.

This agenda of recommended reforms is ambitious, and many sectors have roles to play: DHS officials, legislators, NGOs, journalists, philanthropists, and—first and foremost—agents and officers themselves. But as the many examples of injustice documented here make clear, there is no choice: this is a matter of democratic rule of law, both at the border and beyond it.

This report was made possible, and tremendously improved, by editing, design, research, communications, and content contributions from Kathy Gille, Joanna Williams, Ana Lucía Verduzco, Zaida Márquez, Sergio Ortiz Borbolla, Milli Legrain, and Felipe Puerta Cuartas. We could not do this work without the generosity of our supporters; please become one of them.

Event and Report Launch Wednesday… been working on this one for a while

Next Wednesday, WOLA is publishing a report that I’ve been working on for months, with colleagues at the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales.

It’s an in-depth look at

  • CBP’s and Border Patrol’s serious, pervasive human rights problem
  • Why DHS’s accountability efforts constantly fail
  • What we can do about it

Our launch webinar is at 2PM Eastern next Wednesday, August 2.

There’s a lot of ground to cover! Join us if you can – here’s the RSVP link.

Here’s the text of the event announcement from WOLA’s website.

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and Kino Border Initiative (KBI) cordially invite you to the following webinar:

Abuses at the U.S.- Mexican Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights

A U.S.-Mexico border that is well governed can go hand in hand with a border where migrants and asylum seekers receive humane treatment. For this to happen, U.S. government personnel who abuse human rights or violate professional standards must be held to account and victims must receive justice.

Right now, at the U.S.-Mexico border, this rarely happens. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal government’s largest civilian law enforcement agency, has a persistent problem of human rights abuse without accountability. 

Many, if not most, CBP officers, and agents in CBP’s Border Patrol agency, are professionals who seek to follow best practices. However, the frequency and severity of abuse allegations suggests that agents who do, have little reason to be concerned about consequences from an accountability system that yields few results.

Join us to discuss the launch of our new report, Abuses at the U.S.-Mexican Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights. While documenting the problem at the border and showing “failure points” to accountability, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) offer more than 40 recommendations for more effective complaints, investigations, discipline, oversight, and cultural change. 

The report is a product of years of work documenting human rights violations committed by U.S. federal law enforcement forces at the U.S.-Mexico border. WOLA, based in Washington D.C, maintains a database of over 400 cases—many of them severe—compiled since 2020. KBI has documented thousands of cases of abuse narrated by migrants who have sheltered at its facilities in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. KBI has generated hundreds of formal complaints since 2015 in an effort to improve accountability. 

Of complaints since 2020, 95 percent resulted in no accountability outcome at all. Changing an abusive culture, and increasing the probability of accountability, can take many years and will face political headwinds. But as the many, often shocking, abuses documented by both organizations make strikingly clear, there is no other choice: this is a matter of democratic rule of law, both at the border and beyond it. The United States must bring its border law enforcement agencies’ day-to-day behavior back into alignment with its professed values, especially at a time of historic migration.

With:

Adam Isacson

  • Director for Defense Oversight, Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA

Zoe Martens

  • Advocacy Coordinator, Kino Border Initiative, KBI

Joanna Williams

  • Executive Director, Kino Border Initiative, KBI

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

14:00 – 15:00 ET / 11:00 – 12:00 MST

Register to join the webinar here.

In Colombia, attacks on human rights defenders, social leaders, and ex-combatants are gradually declining

Two sources point to a welcome, though still woefully insufficient, decline in the number of human rights defenders and social leaders being killed in Colombia.

During the first half of 2023:

  • According to Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo), 92 social leaders and human rights defenders were killed between January and June 2023. That is down 19 percent from the 114 killings that the Defensoría counted between January and June 2022.
  • According to the count kept by the independent journalism site La Silla Vacía, 77 social leaders were murdered in the first six months of 2023. That is down 25 percent from the first half of 2022.

The United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia, which produces quarterly reports on implementation of aspects of the 2016 peace accord, also found a downward trend in murders of demobilized former members of the FARC guerrilla group. In its latest report, the Mission counts 18 ex-combatants killed between January 1 and June 26, 2023, roughly 30 percent behind the pace of 2022, and the trend has been declining since 2020.

From UN document: Since the signing of the Peace Agreement, the Mission has verified:

375 KILLINGS
11 Women
54 Afro-Colombians
35 Indigenous

129 ATTEMPTED HOMICIDES (10 Women)

32 DISAPPEARANCES (All Men)

Twelve former combatants (all men) were killed during this period in Caquetá, Cauca, Chocó, Guaviare, Huila, Meta, Putumayo and Valle del Cauca.

2017: 33
2018: 65
2019: 78
2020: 75
2021: 55
2022: 50
2023: 18

This is all good news, though Colombia is still far from zero.

Why is it happening? Some credit may go to the nearly year-old government of Gustavo Petro, which has extended many of the country’s armed groups an opportunity to negotiate peace or demobilization, which gives them an incentive to improve their behavior toward non-combatants.

In the case of attacks on former FARC combatants, the demobilization process happened six years ago now, so “people just getting on with their lives” is something of a factor. Still, the UN warns that “persisting violence continues to jeopardize the process.” Indeed, imminent threats from FARC “dissidents” is forcing the relocation of sites for demobilized guerrillas in Vistahermosa and Mesetas, Meta, a few hours’ drive south of Bogotá.

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