What you see is somewhere between 20 and 40-something people, all triple-shackled, not to each other but individually, their hands in handcuffs chained to their waists, and their feet shackled. And they clunk and clang into court. I mean, there’s this clanging sound of chains. And they go through these mass processes in less than an hour, usually. And they often—they are instructed to answer in groups or answer en masse. So you’ll hear like 40 people being asked a question, and they’ll say, ”Sí,” all at once, or they’ll say, “No.” And it’s just—it’s really uncanny. It’s shocking. It doesn’t feel like due process. One after one after one after one after one, with only one lawyer, they plead guilty: ”Culpable,” ”culpable,” ”culpable,” ”culpable.”

They’re getting somewhere between seven and 10 minutes of counsel right before the proceedings. 

…

There were 60 defendants, and they were split into 20—into three groups of 20. And so, each group of 20 had a lawyer. And I interviewed one lawyer who told me that, of his 20, not one of them had been separated from a child, and not one of them had an asylum claim or a credible fear claim. So, then, in the third group, I was able to interview the attorney, who spoke Spanish, unlike the first one, and seemed very concerned about the immigration issues. And he told me that, of the 20 that I saw him representing, 10 of them had been separated from a total of 15 children, including one woman who was separated from three children. And, you know, he obtained that information by just really speaking with these people.

Traditionally, you go to the port of entry, and you—which is this big building at the bottom, you know, in Brownsville. It’s the big curved bridge. You go to the bottom of the bridge to the U.S. side, to the port of entry, and you tell the agents that want to request asylum. And that is your legal right. You’re in the United States at that point, and you request asylum.

So, what’s been happening up and down the border is—and this has been going on probably for at least a year and a half, that I’m aware of, anyway—is that they’re putting agents up at the top of the bridge, because, you know, there’s sort of an invisible line, which is often marked with a plaque, but there’s a line dividing the United States and Mexico. So, they want—what the government wants at this point is for people not to be able to step into the United States at that invisible line, because then they can’t apply for asylum. And so they’ve got these agents at the top of the bridge, and they’re standing there. And they’re asking everybody who they’re suspicious about—you know, and suspicious of not—you know, of maybe they’re going to apply for asylum, but asking people for their documents. And then they won’t let people go into the United States. So, I mean, it’s almost like they’re not even in Mexico. Technically, they’re in Mexico, but they’re like six inches from the United States. And that’s illegal. I mean, that’s against American law, and it’s against international law. But that’s what’s happening up and down the border.

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, said in a statement that the U.S. government’s separating children from their parents as they seek asylum is “a flagrant violation of their human rights. Doing so in order to push asylum seekers back into dangerous situations where they may face persecution is also a violation of U.S. obligations under refugee law.”

CBP claimed that there were 454 assaults on agents nationwide in 2016, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. In 2017, according to CBP, there were 786 assaults, a 73 percent spike from the previous year. But The Intercept obtained data from CBP showing that the agency was using an unconventional method to count assaults.

I started investigating the claims the Border Patrol has been making for about, oh, the past several months, that it’s a very dangerous job and that their assault statistics were way, way up from last year. And I got data from the Border Patrol which showed that, in fact, assaults were down and injuries are down, but they were using this accounting method—they were counting in this very strange, unconventional way. 

And, for example, what I was told from law enforcement people is that, you know, police and law enforcement officials usually—like, if somebody is assaulted, that’s considered one assault. I mean, somebody could throw seven rocks at you, and that would be—and you’re one agent, so that’s counted as one assault. But the Border Patrol was—or still is, I guess—multiplying the number of agents assaulted—and, by the way, an assault doesn’t necessarily cause an injury, and in most cases with the Border Patrol it doesn’t—but multiplying the number of agents assaulted by the number of perpetrators and the number of weapons. 

So, the example that they gave me was six agents assaulted by seven perpetrators who used a water bottle, a rock and a tree branch. So, when you multiply and multiply and multiply, you get 126 assaults. Conventionally, that would be counted as six assaults.

A recent trial in south Texas provides a good case in point. In November, Border Patrol agent Steven Yackanin chased Eliseo Luis García, a young Guatemalan migrant, through a field near the Rio Grande. The area was only about a mile from where Claudia Patricia Gómez González would later be shot to death.

After Luis was apprehended and taken to lockup, another immigrant there noticed that Luis had blood coming out of his ear. Luis explained that he had been trying to escape and that, as a result, Yackanin and some other agents beat him up.

Yackanin claimed it was he who was assaulted by Luis, and he filled out a Department of Labor form to authorize medical care. He was diagnosed with an elbow sprain and a bruise.

Luis was charged with assault and went to trial. His public defender attorney introduced into evidence photographs of the immigrant and the Border Patrol agent, each standing next to a door with markings. The markings suggest that the Guatemalan immigrant stood about 5 feet tall and weighed perhaps 100 pounds. Yackanin was a full head taller and appeared 60 pounds heavier. The jury apparently believed Luis. He was acquitted.

Even so, the Border Patrol will likely fold the charges against Luis into its fiscal year 2018 assault statistics. Likewise for Claudia Patricia Gómez González, the young Guatemalan woman shot last week. Her death will probably be analyzed as the outcome of a purported assault against a Border Patrol agent.

One woman who spoke about her children in open court was from Honduras. “Is my little girl going to go with me when I get deported?” she asked Morgan.

“Your Honor,” interjected Jeff Wilde, director of the Federal Public Defender’s office in Brownsville, “both she and the man next to her have their children with them. They had a credible fear claim [for asylum]. … Their children have been separated from them, and I’ve been unable to figure out where their children are at this point.”

A young father then said he’d been separated from his 6-year-old and was very worried.

Another parent who appeared in Morgan’s court was from a Central American country that provides no meaningful protection to women and children who are victims of homicidal domestic violence. She asked for her identity to be concealed, because she fears retaliation by the U.S. government. We will call her Delia. Before fleeing her country, she was for years beaten up, cut, assaulted with guns, and threatened with death by her partner. He also threatened to kill their young child. When she hid in another city, he found her and dragged her home.

Delia said she fled her country weeks ago and went on the road to Mexico, eventually crossing the Rio Grande with her child on an inner tube. She saw three Border Patrol agents watching her and floated in their direction, so she could turn herself in.

Delia said that when she arrived later that night at the hielera — the Border Patrol processing office — she told the officers that she and her child needed asylum. She described the beatings and assaults and death threats. “Oh, come on!” she said the officers snickered. “You and everyone else with that old story!”

“You’re going to be deported,” she remembers them telling her. “And your child will stay here.” The next morning, the child was taken. Delia fell on her knees during the removal, wailing and begging not to be separated. Officials looked on indifferently, she said, as her child screamed incessantly.

In Brownsville, Judge Morgan also started alluding to biblical matters. It was Thursday, the fourth day of “zero tolerance” in his court, and defendants were telling their stories. The judge had just asked Holly D’Andrea, the assistant U.S. attorney handling illegal entry prosecutions that day, if it were true that families were being reunited in detention. D’Andrea sounded uncertain, but answered that she thought it was true.

“Tell you what,” the judge said slowly, with a hard edge in his voice, “if it’s not, then there are a lot of folks that have some answering to do.

• Hidden Horrors of “Zero Tolerance” - Mass Trials and Children Taken From Their Parents
• Border Patrol Continues to Exaggerate Danger to Agents to Justify Violence Against Immigrants
• “Hidden Horrors”: Reporter Debbie Nathan on Mass Trials & Kids Separated from Parents at the Border