Twenty House Democrats issued a joint statement Friday slamming the U.S. Border Patrol after a video surfaced showing agents boarding a Greyhound bus in Florida to check passengers’ IDs, calling the act “arbitrary and disruptive.”
The group, which included the leaders of the Congressional Caribbean Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said it was “appalled” by the incident, which resulted in one woman being taken into custody and deported.
“We were appalled to see U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents abusing their mandate and authority to arbitrarily board a bus to demand that all passengers produce identification and documentation,” the statement read.
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A video of the incident quickly spread after being posted online by the Florida Immigration Coalition last week. In it, two Border Patrol agents can be seen asking passengers for their IDs. One passenger told local station CBS4 the agents were asking for “a U.S. identification or a passport with a stamp of entrance.”
“We support strengthening our border protections against external threats and bolstering our officials in their work to keep Americans safe. However, arbitrary and disruptive enforcement actions like this do not make our communities safer,” the statement continued. “Rather, they waste taxpayer resources, cruelly dehumanize people who have not committed any crimes, and erode our fundamental rights. Identification is not required to ride a bus from one Florida city to another.”
The lawmakers called for a review of the federal law that allows Customs and Border Protection agents to operate within 100 miles of a U.S. land or coastal border, which applies to the entire state of Florida.
“In Florida, this arbitrary zone puts everyone in the state under constant threat of stops, interrogations, and searches without even the most basic due process protections,” the lawmakers said. “We regret that visitors to Fort Lauderdale were subjected to this raid, and will work together to push for reasonable limits on border agent authority that protect our civil liberties.”
The Florida Immigration Coalition identified the woman who was taken into custody as being of Caribbean descent and said on its website that family members of the woman in Jamaica haven’t heard from her since Friday.
The group’s membership director, Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez, blasted the agency in a statement, saying incidents like this “erode public trust in police and authority figures whose job is to serve and protect our communities.”
Greyhound released a statement Sunday about the incident, saying the company is “listening” after customers contacted them with concerns.
“We are required to comply with all local, state and federal laws and to cooperate with the relevant enforcement agencies if they ask to board our buses or enter stations. Unfortunately, even routine transportation checks negatively impact our operations and some customers directly,” the company said. “We encourage anyone with concerns about what happened to reach out directly to these agencies. Greyhound will also reach out to the agencies to see if there is anything we can do on our end to minimize any negative effect of this process.”