CBP Agents Falsify Documents to Send Migrants Back to Mexico
Records indicate that asylum seekers who have completed their court cases were sent back to Mexico with documents containing incorrect future court dates, indefinitely confining them in Mexico. Under the Migrant Protection Protocols policy, asylum seekers who have cases in the United States are required to remain in Mexico until the resolution of their cases. The Mexican government agreed to accept these migrants, as long as they have future court dates scheduled. Generally, upon the conclusion of their immigration court cases, migrants are either kept in federal custody or paroled into the United States, depending upon their cases’ outcome. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in California and Texas, however, reportedly provided migrants whose court cases had concluded with documents which contained fraudulent future court dates, sending the migrants back to Mexico. There are reportedly 14 different cases in which migrants received those documents, commonly referred to as tear sheets, which contained falsified future court dates allowing them to be sent back to Mexico.
For more information, view the full article from The San Diego Tribune.
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Trump Plans to Provide $300 million to “Quality Assurance” Teams After Border Wall Breaches
The Trump administration has announced an allocation of up to $300 million in contracts to form quality assurance teams to oversee the next phase of border wall construction. The announcement comes less than a week after reports came out which claimed multiple sections of the southern border wall have been breached by smugglers by using inexpensive power tools.
According to reports, a $100 cordless saw with special blades affixed to it is capable of cutting through the wall’s concrete-filled steel bollards in mere minutes. Furthermore, Trump specifically demanded the beams reach a height of 30 feet against the advice of his immigration officials, who requested the beams to reach only 15 to 18 feet. Because of this increased height, the beams are much easier to push aside and create an “adult-size gap,” allowing circumvention of the wall altogether. If smugglers do not have the tools available to go through the wall’s beams, they have also reportedly used ladders to climb over them.
During a visit to the border in September, Trump asserted that his “Rolls-Royce version,” of the border wall was, “virtually impenetrable,” stating, “If you think you’re going to cut it with a blowtorch, that doesn’t work because you hit concrete. And then if you think you’re going to go through the concrete, that doesn’t work because we have very powerful rebar inside.”
Though Trump repeatedly claimed that Mexico would fund its construction, Trump’s border wall has cost American taxpayers around $10 billion, with $3.6 billion of that total coming from U.S. military budgets.
For more information, view the full article from Quartz.
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