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Dear John,
It’s been over three years since George Floyd was murdered at the hands of the Minneapolis, Minnesota police department. In response to this act of police brutality, racial justice protests sprung up across the United States during the summer of 2020.
It was then that America got a glimpse of another enforcement agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the outsized role CBP played in policing these protests.
CBP—an agency many believed was confined to the border—deployed personnel, utilized aerial surveillance, and used chemical agents and physical force to remove and detain protestors.
In October 2020, after CBP failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the American Immigration Council, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and partners filed a FOIA lawsuit.
We wanted to know how and why CBP had been deployed to these protests. Now, we have those answers.
Read more about the documents we uncovered in today's deep dive article in The Intercept.
In response to our lawsuit, CBP produced thousands of documents detailing the deployments, its last-minute training of officers, and internal confusion within CBP about its enforcement role.
The documents confirm what we long suspected—CBP often got involved in policing protests without being asked by city or state officials, and its actions went far beyond protecting federal property.
CBP’s presence at largely peaceful racial justice protests should concern all U.S. citizens. We must work to ensure that CBP—with its history of racism and abuse—do not infringe on our rights.
Sincerely,
Emily Creighton
Legal Director of Transparency
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