BORDER NEWS

Southwest Key, a Texas based non-profit organization, is seeking to move and expand a shelter that houses unaccompanied immigrant children.  The organization currently operates a 48-bed facility in Coolidge, Arizona, one of only four in the US that specialize in housing unaccompanied children.  They want to move the facility to Mesa, Arizona, which is closer to the INS office in Phoenix.  The expanded facility would have 65 beds.

*********

This week Border Patrol agents apprehended 68 people attempting to enter the US without authorization near Naco, Arizona.  While a large number of people were stopped, as many as 60 people traveling in the same group got away.  A Border Patrol spokesman said that because of increased patrols, seeing this large of a group of migrants is rare.  He also said that the apprehended migrants said that they had paid a smuggler ,200 to be taken to Phoenix.

*********

Two Border Patrol agents have been charged with aggravated assault and kidnapping following an incident in which they allegedly went to a home in Yuma, Arizona and demanded to see the immigration papers of the people inside.  The agents were off duty at the time.  According to court documents, the agents took one of the men in the house to an alley where one of them put a gun to the man’s head.  One of the agents has been placed on administrative leave, and the status of the other, who was temporarily stationed in Arizona, will be determined when he returns to his permanent post.

*********

A group of organizations concerned with human rights abuses along the US-Mexico border this week accused the Border Patrol in El Paso of using racial profiling in making stops, as well as other, more serious human rights abuses.  Fifty-three people presented claims of 80 separate violations, including sexual harassment and negligence resulting in the death of an infant.  The Border Patrol says that it does not use racial profiling, nor does it even randomly stop people to question them about their status, and that it investigates all allegations of misconduct that are reported to it.

*********

The US-Mexico Border Project is calling for people to take action to end the law enforcement buildup on the southwest border, saying that with each new agent, the incidence of human rights violations increases.  The group recently held a three-day Border Summit at which it compiled a list of actions it would like to see taken in an effort to end abuses on the border.  Three of these are:  mobilizing protestors to shut down all ports of entry from Texas to California, organizing community groups to call for an end to Border Patrol operations, and demanding that the government review, and if necessary, prosecute, abuses by Border Patrol agents and ranchers.  The activists say that if people in the rest of the US were aware of the increasing militarization along the border, they would be shocked.