Group Urges More Monitoring of Border Abuses

In its first broad look at human rights along the U.S.-Mexico border, Amnesty International is urging the U.S. government to create civilian watchdog committees to monitor complaints about alleged abuses by Border Patrol agents and other immigration officers.

The rights group said in a 56-page report made public Tuesday that it found “credible evidence” of a wide range of mistreatment by U.S. agents, from beatings and sexual abuse of suspected undocumented immigrants to withholding food, water and medical care during extended periods. Migrants seeking to report mistreatment face a confusing complaint process and some Border Patrol stations do not stock complaint forms in Spanish, the group said.

“The allegations of ill-treatment Amnesty International collected include people being struck with batons, fists and feet, often as punishment for attempting to run away from Border Patrol agents,” said the report, based on a three-week tour along the border from California to Texas last fall.

The organization said a crackdown on illegal immigration and drug smuggling into the United States in recent years, sending hundreds of new Border Patrol agents and U.S. military units along sections of the 2,000-mile border, had increased chances for detainees’ rights to be violated.

But a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said rights violations are “not common.” Spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the report ignored some steps that the agency has taken in terms of training and internal policing to prevent them.

“Any instance of abuse is one too many and will not be tolerated,” Kice said.

Kice said a number of informal community boards have sprouted along the border, providing the INS with local input on potential problems though not overseeing how complaints are handled. “We have made a concerted and sincere effort to address some of the concerns raised in the Amnesty International report,” Kice said.

The study’s release was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the fatal shooting last May 20 of Esequiel Hernandez Jr., an 18-year-old goatherd, by a member of a Marine surveillance team looking for drug smugglers on the border southeast of El Paso. A federal grand jury later declined to indict Cpl. Clemente Banuelos after concluding that he thought that he was protecting a fellow serviceman when he shot Hernandez.

The Amnesty study was sprinkled with anecdotes of alleged abuses culled largely from news stories, reports by other groups and charges raised previously by immigrant-rights advocates. The group said it hoped to apply international human-rights standards to border enforcement and prod the Immigration and Naturalization Service to improve training and procedures for detention and complaints.

“Nice-sounding noises in Washington don’t always translate into reforms in the field,” said Nicholas Rizza, the group’s national refugee coordinator in San Francisco.

Among the recommendations was the proposed creation of citizen panels, similar to local police commissions, to monitor the handling of complaints before the INS and Justice Department--and even launch their own investigations, if necessary. That suggestion was part of a package of recommendations made last year by a separate citizens panel set up by the INS in 1994 to examine its practices.