Center for Investigative Reporting

In case you missed it, three stories that will get you to rethink the U.S.-Mexico border:

1. Who is getting caught with drugs at the border? A recent CIR report shows that four of five Border Patrol drug busts — most of it marijuana — involve U.S. citizens.

2. Who is Border Patrol? Would-be Border Patrol agents are confessing to rape, kidnapping and other shocking crimes during the final steps of the application process — the polygraph test. How recent polygraph admissions by border agency applicants are raising questions about previous hires:

3. How effective is Border Patrol? U.S. Border Patrol only caught a fraction of border crossers spotted by a sophisticated radar dubbed VADER, which was originally used to identify roadside bombers in war zones.

In their unending battle to deter illegal immigration, drug trafficking and terrorism, U.S. authorities already have beefed up border security with drug-sniffing dogs, aircraft  and thousands more agents manning interior checkpoints.

Now, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has decided it wants more, and the Justice Department agency doesn’t care whether someone has even set foot in Mexico.

Clusters of what at first appear to be surveillance cameras have begun turning up in recent months on the Southwest border, and while some of the machines are merely surveillance cameras, others are specialized recognition devices that automatically capture license-plate numbers and the geographic location of everyone who passes by, plus the date and time.

The DEA confirms that the devices have been deployed in Arizona, California, Texas and New Mexico. It has plans to introduce them farther inside the United States. Read more.

Photo: Interstate 19 in Arizona, heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Credit: Ken Lund/Flickr

The threats of terrorism and spillover violence from the Mexican drug war are largely overblown, according to a new report.

The report [PDF] found that those threats have led to an increased enforcement presence and a confusing patchwork of federal agencies responsible for border security. The buildup has pushed migrants into more dangerous travel routes, but has done little to reduce drug trafficking, according to the report.

And despite fears that terrorists could use the southern border as a gateway to the U.S., no member of any group on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list has attempted to enter the country via Mexico, the report said. Read more.

Image: A U.S. Army National Guard soldier watches the U.S.-Mexico border near Nogales, Ariz. via Jim Greenhill/Flickr

Since October 2004, 136 Customs and Border Protection employees have been indicted on or convicted of corruption-related charges.

With his handcuffs briefly unlocked from his wrists while he faced a judge, Miguel Canto-Ortiz wore the familiar mark of a detainee: a bright orange shirt from the Santa Ana Jail. But unlike the thousands of others who have passed through this courtroom, Canto-Ortiz was a man without a lawyer.

On the back of his shaved head is a scar from a traumatic brain injury that rendered him unable to read, write or even remember his birthday.

It was Canto-Ortiz’s deportation hearing, and U.S. District Immigration Judge David C. Anderson was testing his mental condition. The judge asked the 51-year-old detainee if he could explain what type of courtroom he was in.

“Too much problem in my head – I can’t say anything,” Canto-Ortiz mumbled in Spanish.

For the legal system and immigrant-rights attorneys, his case represents a frustrating problem without an easy answer: Illegal immigrants with severe mental health problems – many without criminal records – have been trapped in detention in the United States without attorneys.

“These are people that are sitting in detention for years, not understanding what is happening to them,” said Talia Inlender, an attorney with Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm representing several of the plaintiffs in a class-action suit on behalf of mentally ill detainees in California, Arizona and Washington. “They are so mentally disabled they can’t participate in their own removal proceedings.”

The government holds, on average, more than 30,000 illegal immigrants in detention on any given day. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials do not know how many are mentally disabled, but class-action attorneys estimate as many as 1,000 immigration detainees have a “serious mental illness.” 

In January 2011, Inlender and a group of pro bono law firms identified Canto-Ortiz, a native of Mexico who came to the U.S. as a child, as a potential plaintiff in the lawsuit they filed last year. It is the first class-action suit on behalf of detainees with severe mental disabilities who go through the immigration courts without access to attorneys.

The class-action lawsuit contends that by denying severely mentally ill detainees the right to court-appointed attorneys, the federal government has stripped them of due process rights and violated federal anti-discrimination laws. The Immigration and Nationality Act gives non-citizens the privilege of representation, but not at the government’s expense. Read the full story.

Photo by Ken Steinhardt:

Maria Franco embraces son Jose Franco-Gonzalez as his father, Francisco Franco, watches after Franco-Gonzalez’s release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in March 2010. Franco-Gonzalez, who is mentally disabled, pleaded guilty to assault in 2005 and was detained for five years without a hearing.

The number of people facing deportation because of criminal charges has declined steadily the past three fiscal years, according to data released by the U.S. Justice Department.

Instead, in California and beyond, a growing number are accused only of entering the United States without permission.

The Obama administration has pledged to focus its immigration enforcement on “criminal aliens,” illegal immigrants who’ve been convicted or accused of serious crimes. At the front of this effort, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed the Secure Communities program. The initiative is installing the federal immigration database in every jail in the nation so that when police scan arrestees’ fingerprints, a computer checks their residency status. Read more.

Photo dem10/istockphoto.com