US border agency staff in hot water over treatment of migrants

Four employees from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been referred for disciplinary review over their treatment of Haitian migrants who they sought to push back across the Rio Grande using horses last September, CBP officials said on Friday as the agency released a more than 500-page report on a widely filmed and photographed incident.CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said at a press conference the disciplinary process related to the September 19 incident was ongoing and did not identify the employees.Reuters witnesses at the time saw mounted officers wearing cowboy hats blocking the paths of migrants, and one officer unfurling horse reins resembling a lariat, which he swung near a man’s face as he carried a bag of food across the Rio Grande river to a makeshift encampment in the United States.The images triggered a strong nationwide backlash and demands for an investigation.Magnus added the report said no migrants were struck with the reins that agents were photographed swinging in their direction.However, the report outlined the agents’ inappropriate behaviour toward Haitians, including yelling profanity and insults related to a migrant’s national origin, and using unnecessary force against migrants attempting to re-enter the United States with food.The investigation found one agent on horseback grabbed a man and spun him around in a widely photographed incident, which took place near a sprawling riverside encampment in Del Rio, Texas that had formed after the rapid arrival of thousands of Haitian migrants at the US-Mexico border.According to the report, one agent “acted in an unsafe manner by pursuing the individual he had yelled at along the river’s edge forcing his horse to narrowly manoeuvre around a small child”.The incident originated, the report found, when Texas’ Department of Public Security (DPS) officials also on the scene asked for assistance from Border Patrol.A lack of clear command lead to the agents to inappropriately follow DPS instructions to prevent migrants from crossing the river back into the United States.Migrants were frequently crossing into Mexico to bring back food and supplies that were scarce in the makeshift encampment.Advocates and migrants suing the government over their treatment during the incident said the Haitian man depicted in the widely seen photos described the mounted officer grabbing his neck and only releasing him when the horse was about to trample him.He called the experience humiliating in a court filing.“We are already taking steps to ensure a situation like what occurred in Del Rio doesn’t happen again,” Magnus said during the news conference.