By Kate Morrissey for Capital & Major
President Donald Trump’s nominee to run Customs and Border Safety has been accused of taking part in an alleged company cover-up after officers killed a person within the strategy of deporting him in 2010.
The household of Anastasio Hernández Rojas is ready on a call from a global human rights tribunal that carried out a yearslong investigation into his killing and alleged torture and subsequent denial of justice.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) despatched a letter to the Division of Homeland Safety final week asking for paperwork associated to the case in preparation for Wednesday’s affirmation listening to of Rodney Scott, who oversaw a particular group that attorneys for the household say helped the officers concerned within the 2010 incident escape prosecution.
“I have serious concerns about the gross failures of integrity and leadership he has shown,” Wyden wrote within the letter to Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem.
Sen. Ron Wyden
Scott was performing deputy chief patrol agent of the San Diego Border Patrol Sector in 2010 when border officers beat Hernández Rojas and shocked him with a Taser till he stopped respiratory. Hernández Rojas died in a hospital days later.
Within the aftermath of the killing, a Border Patrol investigative group that Scott oversaw on the time started working the case despite the fact that the San Diego Police Division’s murder group had jurisdiction. Through the years, that Border Patrol group has been accused of masking up and even tampering with proof each in Hernández Rojas’ case and in different situations of officers or brokers utilizing doubtlessly extreme drive.
“Given that CBP is the largest law enforcement agency in the country and the least accountable, we should be very concerned about putting someone at the head of that agency whose disregard for abuse of power could endanger the country,” stated Andrea Guerrero, govt director of Alliance San Diego and one of many attorneys who represented Hernández Rojas’ household within the worldwide human rights case.
Scott, who served as the pinnacle of U.S. Border Patrol through the first Trump administration, didn’t reply to a request for remark from Capital & Major. The White Home additionally didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Scott’s affiliation with the Hernández Rojas case isn’t the one a part of his previous that immigrant rights activists discover problematic along with his nomination.
For instance, Scott was a member of a Border Patrol agent Fb group that ProPublica discovered was stuffed with racist and sexist posts.
He served as deputy chief patrol agent for the San Diego Sector when brokers there used effigies of migrants as goal follow and used those self same effigies to show youngsters the way to shoot weapons.
However it’s his oversight of Border Patrol’s investigative models that has advocates significantly involved. It’s not clear whether or not Scott ever labored on the unit himself, however it’s clear that he was in a supervisory place to the group on the time of Hernández Rojas’ loss of life.
Interfering With Justice
To hunt justice after the U.S. authorities determined to not prosecute brokers concerned in Hernández Rojas’ loss of life, his relations labored with attorneys to submit a case to the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights in 2016. The fee is a part of the Group of American States, of which the U.S. is a member.
It was through the subsequent work to collect proof for that case that attorneys representing the household found that Border Patrol sectors had particular investigative models whose function, based on a PowerPoint doc from the San Diego Sector, included defending officers from legal responsibility.
Known as crucial incident groups, crucial incident investigative groups, or proof assortment groups, the models responded to what the Border Patrol known as crucial incidents, or “incident(s) involving CBP personnel that results in a serious injury, a death, a use of deadly or excessive force, or widespread media attention,” based on a Authorities Accountability Workplace report.
The groups had been homegrown inside Border Patrol and weren’t formally approved to research agent use of drive. The Biden administration disbanded them in 2022 after attorneys engaged on the Hernández Rojas case publicized their existence.
The Inter-American Fee on Human Rights has stated that nations are supposed to make sure that the individuals investigating in-custody deaths are impartial each hierarchically and institutionally. Having the Border Patrol examine its personal brokers’ wrongdoing falls in need of that requirement, however paperwork within the Hernández Rojas case present that the investigative group’s involvement went past a possible battle of curiosity.
All of it started when, one night in Could 2010, a bunch of border officers that included members of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Safety, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement beat, kicked, knelt on and used a Taser on Hernández Rojas whereas he was handcuffed and face down on the bottom on the San Ysidro Port of Entry within the walkway that deportees went all the way down to return to Mexico, based on police data. He stopped respiratory and was taken to a hospital, the place he died three days later.
A U.S Customs and Border Safety official stands among the many lanes of vehicles coming into the San Ysidro Port of Entry in Could 2023.
On the scene, officers allegedly deleted movies from the telephones of witnesses, and the Vital Incident Investigative Group started its work. Nobody contacted the San Diego Police Division till the subsequent day, when a radio journalist referred to as to inquire in regards to the case, based on police data.
“It was such a clusterfuck,” stated Ron Newquist, who on the time labored as a murder investigator for the San Diego Police Division and has since retired from the drive. “When the dust had settled, all the witnesses were gone. People who were involved in the physical struggle with Anastasio were gone. People were pointing double fingers in both directions.”
A Border Patrol briefing doc that’s a part of police data from the day after the beating reveals that the Border Patrol Vital Incident Investigative Group was “coordinating” the investigation with San Diego police. However the Vital Incident Investigative Group’s report was by no means given to police, Newquist stated.
In accordance with a letter despatched by Alliance San Diego to the San Diego District Legal professional’s workplace in 2021 calling for officers concerned within the alleged cover-up to be investigated, a duplicate of the Border Patrol group’s report is beneath protecting seal and comprises a model of the arrest report from when a Border Patrol agent apprehended Hernández Rojas crossing the border that’s completely different from what was given to San Diego police. The letter alleges {that a} part of the arrest report narrative that will contradict the company’s claims that Hernández Rojas was aggressive previous to the beating was eliminated.
Whistleblowers who labored within the oversight department of Customs and Border Safety got here ahead through the worldwide human rights case to say that an official within the highest ranks of the company in Washington had tried to spin what occurred and had even given orders to falsify stories.
Members of the Border Patrol investigative group had been current for interviews with witnesses in addition to the post-mortem, based on police data. Brokers additionally issued an administrative subpoena for Hernández Rojas’ medical data on the hospital after which declined to present them to San Diego police, citing medical privateness issues. A briefing filed with the fee by attorneys representing Hernández Rojas says that Scott signed the subpoena since he was accountable for the San Diego Sector on the time.
One of the vital evident items of lacking proof for San Diego police is video footage of what occurred from authorities cameras within the space.
“We never got the video we were hoping to get — that you think you would get at the port of entry to the busiest border in the world,” Newquist stated. “The [police] report reads like a runaround. I think there’s enough verbiage in there that it speaks for itself.”
Within the police report, investigators documented an in depth back-and-forth with Customs and Border Safety and Border Patrol. The police detective stated within the report that he realized that Border Patrol had forwarded footage to its investigators, however when an agent later gave a CD of footage to the police detective, it was for the fallacious timeframe. Officers then punted the detective amongst brokers and officers till ultimately he realized that the footage had been written over by new recordings.
“I’m not saying there was a cover-up,” Newquist stated. “Maybe it was just incompetence, and they were so sloppy, they were embarrassed. But when you start losing videos, and you don’t get the medical stuff, you could infer what you want.”
The outcome, based on attorneys representing the household of Hernández Rojas, was a violation of the suitable of entry to justice.
Defending the Brokers
It’s not clear whether or not Scott ever labored on a crucial incident group himself, however a questionnaire from a 2019 job posting reveals that Customs and Border Safety seen participation on these groups favorably within the promotion course of.
What is evident, lawyer Guerrero stated, is that Scott supervised the group when he labored within the higher ranks of the San Diego Sector, together with through the Hernández Rojas investigation and after.
In 2016, a girl agent filed a lawsuit over a hidden digital camera {that a} man agent put in in a ladies’s lavatory and altering room utilized by members of the Vital Incident Investigative Group. In accordance with court docket data, Scott and one other supervising agent confronted the person, who was additionally a member of the investigative group, after a girl agent found the digital camera.
In his time in management, Scott confirmed himself to be fast to defend agent actions, even in questionable circumstances.
In 2012, when Scott was deputy chief of the sector, a San Diego Border Patrol agent shot and killed Valeria Tachiquín, a 32-year-old U.S. citizen and mom, on a residential avenue in Chula Vista, California.
“It doesn’t matter what I do,” the girl’s father, Valentin Tachiquín, informed reporters in 2022. “My daughter won’t ever come back to me and to her children, and it’s very sad.”
Tachiquín was inside a house the place brokers in plainclothes appeared with a warrant searching for another person. Tachiquín tried to depart, and an agent adopted her.
Tachiquín ended up lifeless in her automobile, her windshield riddled with bullet holes.
That was the primary time, Guerrero stated, that she had seen Border Patrol give a press release firstly of an lively investigation into one in every of its brokers’ use of drive.
“That’s a clear disregard for investigative protocol and an example of how investigations of agents are routinely obstructed,” Guerrero stated.
“[Scott] has never been a part of any meaningful attempt at accountability with agents. Every shoot is a ‘good shoot.’ That’s very Border Patrol language,” Guerrero stated.
“And a person who can’t recognize abuse of power is a person who shouldn’t hold power,” she added.
Associated | Labeling cartels and gangs as terrorists may damage individuals fleeing them
Scott’s stance on the border and the brokers who work it appear to be intently tied to his spiritual beliefs. He beforehand informed a KQED journalist that “the first deportation and the first borders were created in Genesis.”
Pedro Rios, director of the American Pals Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program, recalled a cellphone dialog with Scott after Border Patrol brokers arrested religion leaders protesting mistreatment of migrants by approaching the wall at its westernmost level in December 2018. He stated Scott informed him the religion leaders’ actions “did not really reflect what a true commitment to God meant.”
In 2020, Scott turned chief of Border Patrol nationwide. He retired in August 2021 through the Biden administration after refusing to associate with a number of the president’s coverage modifications, together with eliminating authorities use of the controversial phrase “illegal alien.”
Scott’s affirmation listening to was held on April 30.
Marketing campaign Motion
