Rights groups ask United Nations to examine open-air detention at border

In a report out this week, a pair of rights groups are asking the United Nations to assess the federal government’s detention practices along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The report comes from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and the Southern Border Communities Coalition — which is made up of more than 100 rights organizations in Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona.

They’re asking the U.N.’s Human Rights Council to review a Customs and Border Protection practice that groups call open-air detention — where migrants await formal processing at the border.

“CBP, holding people outside, with basically no amenities, like nothing they’re required to under the law, out in the dirt, for up to days at a time,” said Ricky Garza, border policy counsel with the Southern Border Communities Coalition, one of the groups behind the report. “The U.S. has had this practice, off and on, but it has had this practice of holding people in really deplorable conditions, outside, no basic necessities at all, no food and water, no medical attention.”

Since 2023, the groups have documented the practice mainly along the Roosevelt Reservation — a 60-foot buffer zone that runs the length of the border in New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Garza says in places where the sites are active — like the Jacumba wilderness in California, aid groups are forced to provide medical services and other support in lieu of the federal government. Their report argues the sites go against international rights treaties and CBP’s own standards.

At the end of 2023, high numbers of migrants were arriving along the Arizona border in Sasabe and Lukeville — waiting hours or overnight for Border Patrol processing.

“SBCC and CHRCL urge the Human Rights Council … to recommend that the United States ensure its border authorities’ laws, policies, and practices comply with relevant international law and standards, and call on the HRC to urge that all conditions of immigrant detention comply with international human rights law and to find that open-air detention, in any form or location, constitutes a violation of the United States’ treaty obligations,” the report reads.

Migrant and asylum seeker processing along the border has dropped since earlier this year, but Garza says groups now worry about the increase in military activity along the border.

The groups hope the issue is considered as part of the U.N.’s Universal Periodic Review of the U.S. later this year, in which policies on immigration, housing, medical services and other issues will be assessed.