Chicago • To those of us who have been following reports of the inhumane ways immigrants have been treated along the southern border, it comes as no shock that there’s a Facebook group in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents made puerile jokes about the deaths of migrants, suggested how to humiliate Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility and posted a vulgar sexual illustration targeting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
Considering that nearly 1,500 allegations of sexual abuse in immigration detention settings involving employees of the Department of Homeland Security were reported between 2012 and March 2018 — a figure that is surely undercounted, given the power imbalance between victims and aggressors — this dehumanizing behavior shouldn’t come as any surprise.