According to a report published on Tuesday by the US Immigration Policy Center, a selective interrogation of more than 1,000 Mexican immigrants who have been deported from the US has shown that 11% of them had been abused in this or that way by US officials while being detained or kept in processing centers.
Besides
various kinds of physical abuse like being hit, kicked, pushed or
dragged, 23% of the respondents said that police officers also abused
them verbally like "f-----g wetback" or "Mexican pieces of s---".
3%
of the respondents said that they have been sexually abused by US
officials. 34% say that officials took away at least one of their
belongings without giving it back.
A
35-year-old man whose name is Javier says that he has decided to visit
his friends in New York but was detained by a border patrol in Nogales
and taken to a processing center.
Javier
said that within the entire night, the officers didn't let him and
other detainees sleep, making them march or clean the room instead. The
officers took away the detainees' watches, so they didn't know what time
it was. The officers didn't even let them raise their heads, making
them to look at the floor.
One
of the report's authors, Jeremy Slack from the University of Arizona,
says that these facts are rather systematic than exceptions.
Meanwhile,
Homeland Security spokesperson Marsha Catron says that the agency
"takes seriously the safety and welfare of detainees and those in our
custody and our facilities are maintained in accordance with applicable
laws and policies."
"Every
DHS employee is held to the highest standard of professional and
ethical conduct. Accusations of alleged unlawful conduct on or off duty,
are investigated thoroughly and if substantiated, appropriate action is
taken," she adds.
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