William Brangham:
According to data that’s out today from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 1.7 million migrants were detained at the border in the 2021 fiscal year. Sixty percent of those were expelled under the public health policy known as Title 42. About a quarter of cases were repeat crossings.
Those numbers come as Human Rights Watch released internal DHS files of more than 160 reports of alleged misconduct and abuse of asylum seekers by DHS officers. These included claims of molestation and physical and verbal abuse.
For more on all of this, I’m joined by Gil Kerlikowske. he served as commissioner of us Customs and Border Protection under President Obama. And, before that, he was director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Gil Kerlikowske, great to have you back on the “NewsHour.”
I wonder if you could — let’s start with this Human Rights Watch report. And I should indicate this is not Human Rights Watch reporting. These are internal documents they got of complaints that were made of this awful behavior by DHS agents against them.
What do you make of that?
Gil Kerlikowske, Former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner: A couple of things.
One, you have to understand that it wasn’t really until 2014 that Customs and Border Protection actually got their own robust internal affairs. That had been outsourced. And so you need accountability, you need investigations, and you need to be able to do discipline. And that is still an ongoing issue.
But the number of complaints is certainly concerning. You have to remember, too, that Border Patrol has over 20,000 agents. They have had literally, during the time that those numbers came forward, millions of encounters with people crossing the border illegally. Some are just families. Some are willing, more than willing to surrender immediately.
But there are other people that aren’t quite as willing to surrender.