Muslim Migrants Targeted at US-Mexico Border due to FBI Desire to Recruit Informants
This is according to lawyers for the ACLU.
Of the thousands of people who cross the southern border of the United States each year, only a tiny portion are charged with any crime.
But there’s a rarely-used law broken by border-crossers, like U.S. 19 1459, requiring those entering the US to present themselves at a border crossing and report their entry. According to a recent L.A. Times investigation, the U.S. attorney’s office in Del Rio, Texas arraigned more than 200 people for breaking the law in an 18-month spate of charges starting in October 2021. Over 60% of them were from Muslim-majority countries, such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Mali.
That’s despite asylum seekers and migrants from Muslim-majority countries making up only a very small proportion of those entering across the southern border.
It’s unknown what motivated the prosecutions, but according to the Times, the charges being limited to a single federal attorney’s office suggests that it’s not part of a government-wide effort. They also raised another possible explanation for the charges; efforts to recruit FBI informants in Muslim American communities.
Republican critics of US President Joe Biden’s border policy and parts of the American intelligence community have raised concerns about infiltration across the southern border by groups such as Al-Qaeda or Daesh (ISIL or ISIS), according to Bloomberg Law. By prosecuting border-crossers from Muslim majority countries, the FBI would have a great deal of leverage to create informants.
At the beginning of April and shortly after the LA Times presented it’s preliminary findings to the Department of Justice, the prosecutors in Del Rio stopped charging people under U.S. 19 1459.
But since then, they found that federal prosecutors have continued to charge a similar proportion of people from Muslim-majority countries for the more common crime of unauthorized entry.
Those prosecuted often receive the maximum sentence of six months, and the LA Times found court records that show two migrants were held longer than the maximum of a year, and more than a dozen have sentencing dates scheduled that will violate that maximum as well.
Many of the migrants charged were then transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after serving their sentences. Even leaving ICE custody doesn’t mean reaching safety for many of refugees charged under the statute, as they could still be deported back to their home countries unless they receive asylee status.
Source: asamnews.com
