By The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, September 2024

This report is authored by the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (Florence Project) a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that was founded in 1989 and provides free legal and social services to adults and unaccompanied children facing immigration removal in Arizona. In 2023, the Florence Project served 17,514 unaccompanied immigrant children detained in federal facilities referred to as shelters in Arizona. This report summarizes 314 complaints made by unaccompanied immigrant children ages 5 to 17 in the span of 15 months about conditions they experienced while in U.S. Border Patrol custody, a subagency of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Children reported experiencing a broad range of abuse and mistreatment, including verbal and physical abuse, hunger, a lack of hygiene products and lack of access to medical care. The report makes concerning findings, including a continuation of severe verbal and physical abuse of children. Nearly 4 in 10 children in this report experienced verbal abuse and 1 in 10 experienced physical abuse. Children reported they were subjected to vile language, derogatory names, and threatened with deportation or jail. Children also reported being pushed, kicked, and punched, and that some agents brandished weapons to instill fear. U.S. law defines unaccompanied immigrant children as persons under 18 who lack lawful immigration status and who do not have a parent or legal guardian in the U.S. available to provide care and physical custody.ii In our decades of experience, unaccompanied immigrant children leave their homes and travel to the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including to seek protection from gang or government warfare, violence within their own home, extreme poverty, and/or to reunify with family. Unaccompanied children are generally apprehended by CBP near the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2002, Congress charged the U.S. Department of Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) with the care and custody of unaccompanied immigrant children in order to comply the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA).iii The FSA requires that unaccompanied children not be placed in adult detention centers and instead must be held in the less restrictive ORR shelters with a prompt process to be placed in the least restrictive setting through reunification with sponsors. In 2008, Congress expanded and codified the rights, including that CBP “shall transfer” an unaccompanied immigrant child to ORR custody “no later than 72 hours” after identifying them.iv Congress understood that CBP, a law enforcement agency, is not equipped to care for children. The Florence Project has long been alarmed by reports of abuse and mistreatment while in Border Patrol custody. We have assisted children in filing hundreds of individual complaints and authored three prior extensive reports in 2009, 2014, and 2022. vi Despite hundreds of complaints about this abuse, the agencies charged with  oversight of CBP have failed to make meaningful change and to stop the ongoing abuse.

Tucson, AZ:  Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project.,  2024. 13p.