Complaint: Detained immigrants not getting items returned to them
Border agents allegedly drop off migrants in Mexico without their money, identification or phones
LAS CRUCES — A complaint expected to be filed today with the Department of Homeland Security alleges immigration officers and border agents are failing to return belongings confiscated from immigrants in the U.S. illegally — leaving them vulnerable when they are deported.
The ACLU’s New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights planned to file the administrative complaint along with five other immigrant advocacy organizations on both sides of the border asking DHS to investigate 26 cases of alleged abuse by authorities and to review its policy regarding immigrants’ possessions.
The complaint contends that deporting migrants to border towns without money to get home, without the cellphones that contain vital contacts and without IDs that can leave them undocumented in their own country exposes them to “serious risk of harm,” including exploitation by criminal networks.
Ramiro Cordero, Border Patrol spokesman, said Tuesday the agency had not been notified of any action by the ACLU.
Two federal judges in Las Cruces — who sen- tence many of the felony cases for illegal border crossings in New Mexico — have previously raised the issue, saying that returning unlawful immigrants’ possessions is “vital” to upholding rule of law. They have called meetings with stakeholders asking for a solution.
The complaint targets the policy and practices of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, Border Patrol agents and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement officers — all agencies under the DHS umbrella — and focuses specifically on the New Mexico and West Texas region.
When apprehended for crossing illegally, migrants turn over whatever they are carrying to border agents or immigration officers: cash, cellphones, jewelry, religious articles, family photos and mementos.
According to the agency’s policy issued last October, CBP and Border Patrol are supposed to hold the items for up to 30 days and “make every effort to transfer a detainee’s personal property with the detainee” once he or she is transferred out of their control. After 30 days are up, the property “will be considered abandoned and may be destroyed.”
In its introduction, CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske described the policy as “the first nationwide standards which govern CBP’s interaction with detained individuals” and said the policy “continues our commitment to the safety, security and care of those in our custody.”
But in practice, 30 days is “just not enough time,” particularly for those immigrants who are serving time for having crossed the border illegally more than once, said Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU’s Regional Center for Border Rights. Those immigrants typically spend more than a month in jail.
“The U.S. government is robbing people of their personal belongings,” Gaubeca said. “That is inappropriate and contradicts our American values of fairness and justice. Secondly, it’s also adding another level of vulnerability. Without their identification, they can’t get a job, they can’t open a bank account, they can’t return to their towns. We are creating a vicious cycle.”
Cordero said U.S. currency can be transferred to jail commissaries that allow it, and detainees can designate someone to retrieve their property, including a Mexican consulate.
“They have the right to claim their property within 30 days,” he said. “If they don’t claim it and we didn’t dispose of it, just imagine, we’d be holding things since 1924.”
Last year, ICE removed or deported 235,413 people, including more than 146,000 people returned to Mexico — many of them dropped off at a border crossing like the one that links El Paso to downtown Ciudad Juárez. Mariana González was one of them, according to the complaint.
Speaking by phone Tuesday from Mexico City, González told the Journal she crossed the border illegally four times, was appre- hended each time and jailed at least twice.
Border Patrol picked her up in the desert near El Paso in June and confiscated her cellphone and 1,150 pesos, or about $75 at the time — allegations that are detailed in the ACLU’s complaint. She was given a claim check, which she kept while she served two months’ jail time in Albuquerque — but she got nothing back.
“I told my lawyer, ‘I don’t have any way to get home. They took my cellular and my money,’ ” she said. “He told me, ‘They’re not going to give it back.’ ”
In an October 2015 email to a half dozen stakeholders including the U.S. Marshals, a federal public defender and prosecutor, and Border Patrol, U.S. District Court Judges Robert Brack and Kenneth Gonzales in Las Cruces wrote, “Criminal immigration offenders too frequently are not receiving their personal property after sentencing and before they are returned to their home country.”
Returning personal belongings, they said, “is vital to maintain trust and confidence in the rule of law ... We note, however, there is no agreement on which office has primary or even partial responsibility to ensure the property is returned timely, or as to the logistical steps to return the property.”
“It’s complicated,” said Blanca Navarrete, director of the Ciudad Juárez-based nonprofit Binational Defense and Advocacy Program, which joined the ACLU complaint. “We want the U.S. government to communicate a standard for all its agencies,” not just CBP.
The U.S. and Mexican governments in February signed new repatriation agreements that include a promise by DHS to “take all feasible steps to ensure that property, valuables and money retained are available for return to the rightful owner at the time of initial release from DHS custody.”