News & Commentary

A meaningful shift in border policy to restore the civil rights and liberties of border communities means an end to walls, wasteful militarization, intrusive surveillance technology, and the removal of Border Patrol, CBP’s law enforcement arm, from policing U.S. communities.

Dismantling these programs will send a powerful signal to immigrant communities: the Biden administration will not continue Trump’s agenda of xenophobia and abuse.

Much like Japanese incarceration, the Trump administration used fear-mongering under the veil of “national security” to further its discriminatory agenda — this time by suspending visas under INA 212(f) to repeatedly ban Black and Brown people.

by Urooj Alavi

The months she spent in Matamoros were a nightmare. Temperatures oscillated between blazing heat during the day and frigid cold at night. One of those nights, she and her daughter huddled in their tent as the sound of a gun battle between police and a local drug cartel echoed through the streets.

CRCL’s frequent inaction and CBP’s own undermining of the office’s oversight role further bolsters the need for complete and permanent retention of internal agency records. We simply do not know what types of abuse could be documented in these files.

The evidence is clear: Immigrants are routinely abused, silenced, traumatized, and even killed by the U.S. immigration detention system, and it has to stop.

Though they claim to “advance human welfare” and help their customers “move society forward” by providing the necessary knowledge, information, and analytical tools for researchers, lawyers, and government agencies, they are fueling the mass deportation and detention system.

For Black immigrants, life in the U.S. often means being encircled by the same systems of criminalization, profiling, and over-policing as Black Americans.