SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Seven immigrant rights organizations have filed a complaint against the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, accusing CBP of violating its custody standards by holding asylum-seeking migrants in several open-air detention sites along the U.S.-Mexico border in California.
The complaint says Border Patrol agents forced asylum-seekers to wait outdoors for several hours or days at a time between border barriers in the San Diego Sector and at other open-air sites near Jacumba, California.
Agents are accused of not allowing migrants to leave the areas while not providing them with “access to water, food, sanitation, medical care, or protection from the elements.”
The 88-page complaint was filed by the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies; the International Refugee Assistance Project; the National Immigration Law Center; Al Otro Lado; the American Friends Service Committee; Border Kindness; and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.
This is the second federal complaint filed against DHS and CBP by the same organizations. The first one took place on May 13, 2023.
The groups maintain the inhumane conditions at the open-air detention sites have not changed and are spreading to other sites along the southern border.
“It is galling that the Department of Homeland Security claims that their ‘lack of resources’ compels them to hold vulnerable refugees in open-air prisons without food, water, shelter, adequate sanitation facilities, or medical care,” said Erika Pinheiro, executive director of Al Otro Lado. “DHS’ 2023 budget is almost $170 billion, yet it forces overstretched nonprofits, mutual aid groups, and dedicated volunteers to provide the basics that migrants need to survive in its open-air detention sites. Holding refugees in these inhumane conditions is a deliberate choice that contradicts the United States’ self-proclaimed position as a bastion of freedom and human rights.”
Groups like Al Otro Lado and the others fear that as winter approaches, conditions will deteriorate “further endangering those exposed to the elements.”
“It is unconscionable that Border Patrol agents force asylum seeking migrants to wait for hours and days in dangerous conditions,” said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s US-Mexico Border Program. “In San Diego, one person in a medically vulnerable state has already died at an open-air detention site. Community members and human rights organizations have been left to provide basic care, including food and water, to thousands seeking shelter and asylum in the United States.”
Neither DHS nor CBP have responded to the allegations.
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