https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-ramirez/obama-administration-must_2_b_7979870.html

As immigration issues grab headlines across the nation, congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle resort to knee jerk reactions calling for wasteful, military-style tactics along the southern border, reflecting the deep misunderstanding that Capitol Hill has of border communities.

These efforts fail to address glaring systemic problems within the nation's largest law enforcement agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and fail to offer solutions that will move us forward together.

Unchecked abuse and corruption within CBP must be part of any discussion regarding the US southern border and the time has come to talk about reforming the agency. The Obama administration has the means to move us forward and should do so immediately.

Earlier this summer, the administration released a report calling for significant reforms to CBP to prevent widespread corruption and expand much-needed oversight. CBP has come under increased scrutiny as a nationwide debate continues around law enforcement's relationship to communities, especially communities of color.

For years, CBP has failed to hold its officers accountable when they use excessive forceand kill unarmed civilians. The agency fails to document and report racial inequities in who its officers stop and search, and fails to detect and deter counterproductive racial profiling that undermines values of fairness and equality. These excesses infringe daily on the rights and dignity of border communities and their residents, who go about their daily lives up to 100 miles away from the physical border yet experience CBP permanent checkpoints and patrols in their neighborhoods. For example, a recent report based on more than 50 complaints in New Mexico and Texas discovered abuses such as racial profiling, unjustified searches and detentions, physical and verbal abuse, intimidation, and interfering with emergency medical treatment. Ninety percent of people reporting these abuses were U.S citizens and 81 percent were Latino.