As border security expands, complaints of abuse rise among Americans
As border security expands, complaints of abuse rise among Americans
By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Foreign Staff April 30, 2014 Updated 4 hours ago
CHULA VISTA, Calif. — A series of lawsuits filed in recent months in federal courts along the U.S. border with Mexico highlight what advocates say is a growing list of complaints against two U.S. agencies that have expanded rapidly amid the clamor to secure the nation’s borders.
In one lawsuit, centered on events in Chula Vista, Calif., a Border Patrol agent is accused of leaping on the hood of a car driven by a mother of five and shooting her dead. She was unarmed. The agent had been fired from his previous job as a sheriff’s deputy for a variety of misconduct.
In a second case, a Customs officer in Brownsville, Texas, violently pushed a disabled woman to the ground. She had a miscarriage the next day. Border officers also had to call firefighters to remove handcuffs that allegedly had bound her wrists too tightly.
For a third woman, her return to the United States was intrusive and painful. She was pulled from a line at an El Paso, Texas, border crossing, apparently on the suspicion that she was carrying drugs. She was handcuffed. Over the next six hours, agents escorted her to a hospital, where they oversaw the probing of her anus and vagina, forced her to take a laxative and then watched as she moved her bowels. When no drugs were found, they ordered her to submit to an X-ray and a CT scan.
More:
http://www.thestate.com/2014/04/30/3418831/as-border-security-expands-complaints.html