The American Civil Liberties Union released a scathing report on Wednesday that documents widespread abuse of unaccompanied immigrant children in U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) custody.
The report — which was put together by the ACLU’s Border Litigation Project and the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School — is based on more than 30,000 pages of documents obtained by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act request.
What it describes is troubling.
The Show spoke to Mitra Ebadolahi, staff attorney with the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, for more details on what they found.
The Show also reached out to CPB about this, and while the agency declined an interview, they sent us a statement calling the allegations made by the ACLU "unfounded and baseless." CBP said the report "equates allegations with fact [and] flatly ignores a number of improvements made by CBP as well as oversight conducted by outside, independent agencies."
In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General conducted unannounced visits to CPB facilities and released a report. It found prior claims made by the ACLU to be unfounded. However, according to Ebadolahi, the inspector general does not have enough independent disciplinary authority to take action on complaints like these.
