Opinion: Report criticizes response to complaints against Border Patrol agents

A report this week from the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Policy Center accuses federal officials of failing to act in a timely manner on abuse complaints against Border Patrol agents — in some cases coming to no resolution more than three years after an allegation was made.

While U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say the immigrant rights group’s report touched on only a relative few of the detention cases it has handled, a spokesman for the Border Patrol agents union said the statistics reflect the reality of trying to guard the border.

“In my experience,” said Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, “most allegations made against Border Patrol agents are primarily to gum up the works” and win delays in deportations.

Still, the report — combined with earlier criticisms of the agency’s officer-involved shootings — paints a troubling picture of what seems to be a cavalier approach by federal officials to abuse complaints.

Called “No Action Taken: Lack of CBP Accountability in Responding to Complaints of Abuse,” the report culls details from 809 abuse complaints filed from 2009 to 2012 that the group obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. It found that 40% of the complaints had yet to be resolved by January 2012, and of those that had, only 3% found improper action by the agents.

Surprisingly, there is no clear nationwide data available for the percentage of sustained complaints about police. But a 2006 federal Bureau of Justice Statistics report (based on 2002 statistics) found that about 8% of physical abuse complaints led to disciplinary action against police officers.

The agency was slow in dealing with the complaints, too. Of the adjudicated complaints, it took 122 days on average to get through the process, which seems reasonable for an investigation. But for those that remained unresolved: an average of 389 days. And the real delay is longer. That calendar count ended on the date the government responded to the FOIA request, so it’s unknown how long it took to resolve those complaints.