The Treatment of Migrants and Refugees

The administration set a far more productive tone than its predecessor in addressing abuse by the U.S. Border Patrol against undocumented migrants along the Mexican border. The Bush administration had dismissed out of hand our investigation in 1992 showing a pattern of unredressed physical abuse by Border Patrol agents. The Clinton administration responded to an updated probe in 1993 with a detailed list of reforms that it was studying or implementing.

Yet the administration's attention to human rights standards dropped precipitously when it came to Haitian asylum-seekers. Despite escalating violence of such severity that international monitors were forced to evacuate the country, the administration insisted on summarily returning Haitian boat people to the Haitian army, on the same dock where its own observer troops would not land, without any attempt to identify and exempt those who risked persecution. U.S. government centers set up in Haiti to interview would-be refugees offered small consolation, as those willing to risk travel to the centers faced indefinite waits.

The administration successfully defended a stingy reading of refugee law before the U.S. Supreme Court, by arguing that the prohibition against forcibly repatriating refugees applied only once refugees reached land. It then showed a similar lack of generosity when it stopped three boats laden with Chinese migrants of the coast of Mexico, undertook only superficial attempts to screen for refugees, and then pressured Mexican authorities to accept and repatriate their passengers.