A Tucson-based immigrants' rights group issued its second report in three years this week alleging systematic abuses of illegal immigrants by the Border Patrol.
The No More Deaths report - titled "A Culture of Cruelty" - says people caught trying to cross the border illegally are regularly deprived of food and water; denied medical treatment; crammed into detention cells kept at frigid temperatures; separated from family members; and not given their belongings back.
The report, released last week, is based on three years of interviews in Mexican border towns with nearly 13,000 repatriated border crossers.
"Abuse, neglect and dehumanization of migrants is part of the institutional culture of the Border Patrol, reinforced by an absence of meaningful accountability mechanisms," the report says.
The Border Patrol disagrees that there are systematic problems. On a daily basis, agents make "every effort" to ensure that people in their custody are given food, water and medical attention as needed, Border Patrol spokesman Mario Escalante said in an emailed statement. Mistreatment or agent misconduct are not tolerated by the Border Patrol, he said.
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"As a matter of policy, Border Patrol agents are required to treat all those they encounter with respect and dignity," Escalante said in the statement. "This requirement is consistently addressed in training and consistently reinforced throughout an agent's career."
Agents who don't adhere to those standards are identified and disciplined, he said.
There have been 127 U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees who have been arrested across the nation on corruption, bribery or civil-rights charges since fiscal year 2004. That's a tiny fraction of the agency's 58,981 employees, but the cases are on the rise.
The number of cases against Customs and Border Protection employees initiated each year by the Homeland Security inspector general has more than doubled from fiscal year 2004 to 2010. Complaints lodged against the agency's employees increased by 38 percent in that span. The Border Patrol is within Customs and Border Protection.
The increase has coincided with an unprecedented hiring boom set in motion during the mid-2000s that doubled the size of the Border Patrol and increased the total number of employees in Customs and Border Protection by 44 percent.
All apprehended illegal immigrants pass through Border Patrol's short-term processing centers before officials determine their next destination. Some are sent to long-term detention centers, while many are granted voluntary returns to Mexico.
There are no internal or external government reports that either dismiss or validate the allegations of mistreatment in short-term custody detention centers. The new report from No More Deaths released this week follows a similar one issued in 2008.
"This systemic abuse must be confronted aggressively at the institutional level, not denied or dismissed as a series of aberrational incidents attributable to a few rogue agents," the new report says.
On StarNet: Read more about border-related issues in Brady McCombs' blog, Border Boletín, at go.azstarnet.com/borderboletin
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To read the full report, go to www.cultureofcruelty.org
Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.
