A new set of guidelines released by Customs and Border Protection this month outlines how migrant belongings should be handled during processing.
Migrants and asylum seekers apprehended along the border and taken into federal custody are separated from their belongings at least temporarily during processing. But reports of items being thrown away rather than returned have persisted for years, along with calls for reform from lawmakers and advocates.
The agency’s new, 9-page directive outlines requirements for handling belongings and also designates a wide range of essential items – including medical materials, legal documents, religious garb and belongings with sentimental or monetary value.
“This new directive, while it’s not perfect, we do think it will go a long way toward ensuring that there is greater respect for those items and that there are many less situations in which people are being stripped of them,” said Noah Schramm, border policy strategist with the ACLU of Arizona.
The guidelines come months after a government watchdog report that called on CBP to create more stringent property standards.
Schramm with the ACLU says Border Patrol already has a rigorous system for tracking belongings in processing facilities. At a processing facility in Tucson, for example, migrants’ belongings are tied to them electronically through a wristband they get once they arrive. But Schramm says there’s also huge variations from sector to sector, and confiscations sometimes happen prior to when migrants arrive at processing facilities.
“It is an enormous problem from our perspective if say Border Patrol agents out in the field are telling people ‘oh no, those medications, you have to throw them away,’” he said.
He said the new guidelines could create greater consistency. The document directs Border Patrol sectors to craft systems to come into compliance within 30 days of the order’s publication.
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