Texas Joins a National Wave of Complaints Highlighting Rampant Abuse by U.S. Customs and Border Protection

For Immediate Release

CONTACT: Dione Friends, 713 942 8146 X 110 or 832 291 4816; [email protected]

Houston – The ACLU of Texas has joined with an alliance of immigrant advocacy groups, private attorneys, and a law school clinic in filing legal complaints targeting abuses by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Ten damages cases have been filed alleging unlawful CBP conduct in northern and southern border states; six of the 10 claims originated in Texas. These cases are the latest illustrations of an ongoing pattern of rampant misconduct against both immigrants and U.S. citizens on our nation’s borders.

One of the complaints is by ACLU of Texas client, Laura Mireles, a United States citizen who was forcibly thrown to the ground, injured, and arrested by a CBP agent without any justification. Ms. Mireles is small in stature, approximately 5’1” tall and 100 pounds, and has a visible malformation of her hands and feet. The agent became agitated and reacted violently when Ms. Mireles asked him about his search of her handbag during a search of her car. Ms. Mireles did not interfere with the search and no illegal items were found. The agent put his full weight on her small frame and handcuffed her so tightly that the fire department later had to cut the handcuffs from her wrists. Ms. Mireles, who was understandably confused, scared and crying, asked the agent to explain what was happening. He responded by threatening to hit her if she didn’t shut up.

“Unfortunately, these kinds of abuses are all too common in our border communities, though they rarely result in litigation,” said Adriana Pinon, ACLU of Texas Senior Staff Attorney. “Our client is a law abiding citizen who didn’t deserve to be physically abused by a border protection agent as she tried to go about her normal routine. Before we put more agents on the border, CPB needs to train the ones who are already there.”

Rebecca Robertson, Legal and Policy Director of the ACLU of Texas added, “The people in Congress who are calling for more border patrol agents as a pre-condition for comprehensive immigration reform need to know that our borders are secure. We have agents who are abusing their positions because there’s simply not enough training and a lack of accountability. More boots on the ground will make a bad situation worse for the people who live and work in border communities.”

This effort, which was coordinated by the American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, highlights CBP agents’ unlawful use of their enforcement authority. Border Patrol agents routinely exceed their statutory mandate by conducting enforcement activities outside border regions, making racially motivated arrests, employing derogatory and coercive interrogation tactics, and imprisoning arrestees under inhumane conditions. The cases include claims for unlawful search and seizure, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, and battery.

Among the cases filed:

• CBP agents apprehended three women at the Texas-Mexico border and detained them in a freezing cold cell called the “hielera,” or icebox in English. The temperature in the hielera was so cold that the women’s fingers and lips turned blue. CBP held the women for up to six days in dire conditions. They had no beds, chairs, blankets, or toiletries, no access to bathing facilities, and were frequently fed only a single sandwich each day. CBP agents threatened to keep the women in the hielera if they did not sign documents in English that they did not understand because they only spoke Spanish. The women ultimately signed these documents to escape the hielera, only to learn that they had agreed to expedited removal.
• CBP agents forced a 63-year-old woman with no criminal history off a Greyhound bus in Ohio, subjected her to hours of interrogation, and refused to let her use the bathroom for so long that she urinated on herself. After being detained all night in her urine-soaked jeans, CBP transferred her to an immigration detention facility, where she suffered an acute stroke. As a result of this trauma, she suffers from chronic pain, numbness, and partial paralysis on her left side.
• CBP agents at Dulles International Airport unlawfully detained a four-year-old U.S. citizen child for more than twenty hours without adequate food and water, deprived her of any contact with her parents, and sent her back to Guatemala. CBP agents informed the child’s father that they could not return her to “illegals.”

Click here for more information about these and additional cases filed as part of the national litigation strategy.

Ms. Mireles is represented in the complaint by the ACLU of Texas and Stapleton and Stapleton Lawyers.