The controversial quick response teams within the Border Patrol that were accused by immigration advocates of helping cover up incidents of abuse by agents got their responsibilities limited by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
CBP memo – signed last week – has issued new standards while consolidating internal investigative power in the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) with an aim to increase the oversight of the critical incident teams (CITs).
The changes within CBP come amid growing criticism of the CITs – including calls for a Governmental Accountability Office review – from lawmakers along with another congressional letter pointing to known instances of evidence tampering by CITs.
In line with the new standard, the OPR now has greater power in reviewing Border Patrol actions with a special emphasis on any incident caused by use of force, any injury or death that resulted from pursuit, and any death of a CBP employee, or of migrants in their custody.
OPR has overseen internal affairs investigations in CBP since its creation in 2016.
The memo signed by Border Patrol Chief Raúl Ortiz and OPR assistant commission Matthew Klein mandates any CIT team notified of a critical incident to immediately notify the OPR duty agent to determine if a response is required.
Unless specifically requested to do so by the OPR duty agent, the CIT teams will not respond to a critical incident and are also prohibited from conducting any interviews without express permission.
CITs are also called shadow police units by some border community advocates since they’re not formally codified in the CBP operations manual, so the pressure mounted on the Border Patrol to reform them is even stronger.
Though this reform calls and allegations of Border Patrol’s self-policing date from decades back, the activists opposing the practice were additionally enticed by a migrant death in Border Patrol custody in 2010.
The Border Patrol has long been accused of covering up agents by the immigration activists’ misdeeds, whose complaints fell on deaf ears for years.
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