WASHINGTON — President Trump’s nominee to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection is facing scrutiny for his role in an investigation into the death of a migrant who was brutally beaten by Border Patrol agents in 2010.
Critics allege Rodney Scott participated in a cover-up and is unqualified to lead the agency. His defenders say he acted appropriately and called him a fine choice to head one of the largest federal agencies with more than 60,000 employees, including the Border Patrol and agents at ports of entry.
Rodney Scott, who led the U.S. Border Patrol until 2021, faced questions about the death from senators Wednesday during a Senate Finance Committee hearing to consider his nomination.
“Today’s hearing is to determine whether Rodney Scott possesses that experience, along with the strength of character to be trusted with one of the most essential jobs in government,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “The evidence shows that he falls short.”
Scott was acting deputy chief patrol agent of the San Diego Border Patrol Sector when agents preparing to deport Anastasio Hernández Rojas beat and tased him in a walkway at the San Ysidro Port of Entry until he stopped breathing, court records show. He died in a hospital two days later, leaving behind a wife and five children.
Federal officials said Hernández Rojas, 42, fought with the agents attempting to remove him from the country.
Last week Wyden sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security seeking documents related to the death and investigation. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s response Tuesday did not include documents. She called Wyden’s “uninformed” account of Scott’s alleged role in the investigation “infuriating and offensive.”
Noem said Scott was not at the scene when the incident occurred, had limited involvement with an internal investigative team that reviewed the case, and didn’t impede external investigations or conceal facts.
“No less than seven local and federal investigatory bodies reviewed the circumstances of Mr. Hernández Rojas’ death, and none found evidence of actions that were inconsistent with law, regulation, or policy,” Noem wrote.
Roxanna Altholz, director of the Human Rights Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, which represents the family of Hernández Rojas, said in a statement that the family has never received a full accounting of how the investigation was handled.
“His family has spent years asking the same question: How can 17 agents of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, Customs and Border Protection, beat to death a man in public in front of dozens of eyewitnesses on videotape without consequence?” she wrote.
In 2017, the government settled a federal lawsuit with Hernández Rojas’ family for $1 million.
In a landmark decision Wednesday, an international human rights commission found that the U.S. is responsible for Hernández Rojas’ killing and that a cover-up followed. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — an autonomous judicial body within the Organization of American States — called on the U.S. to reopen the criminal investigation of the agents involved.
During the hearing, Wyden called out Noem for not producing the documents he requested.
“The secretary responded with a letter that said Mr. Scott was basically a perfect angel and all the allegations against him are false, but produced zero documents that I requested to back it up,” Wyden said. “In the first 100 days of this administration it seems like this agency is practically allergic to the truth.”
Before Wednesday’s hearing, James Wong, a former deputy assistant commissioner of CBP’s office of internal affairs, wrote to Wyden with concern about Scott’s handling of Hernandez Rojas’ death.
Units known as critical incident teams (CIT), which were disbanded in 2022, investigated use-of-force incidents in the Border Patrol. They were “designed to mitigate liability for Border Patrol senior management and to present Border Patrol in the best possible light,” Wong wrote.
The team used an administrative subpoena, which Scott signed, to obtain Hernández Rojas’ medical records. Wong said that “was blatantly unlawful” because “such subpoenas should only be used for the very limited purpose of examining imports and exports, not for the collection of medical evidence or to search a premises.”
“By virtue of his position, Mr. Scott would have overseen all CIT operations on the case and all CIT information would have filtered through him to CBP headquarters,” Wong wrote. “This was not an investigation, it was a cover-up — one Mr. Scott supervised.”
Noem, in her letter to Wyden, wrote that “Mr. Scott’s signature, and the execution of the administrative subpoena he signed, were consistent with law and agency policy.”
According to court records, officials at the scene erased photos and videos from witnesses’ phones. The critical incident team declined to give San Diego police Hernández Rojas’ medical records. Footage of the scene was written over with new recordings.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) asked Scott whether he did “anything in that case to interfere with the investigation.”
“Absolutely not,” Scott replied.
Wyden also took issue with other incidents in Scott’s past, saying he has not learned from his mistakes.
One of those was Scott’s membership in a private Facebook group for Border Patrol agents with more than 9,000 members that contained racist and sexually violent posts.
Wyden also cited Scott’s response to a former Border Patrol agent and survivor of sexual assault who posted criticism of Scott on X.
Scott responded with a post of his own:
“I investigated all your allegations. Not a crumb of evidence could be found to support any of them. But I did find out a lot about you. Lean back, close your eyes and just enjoy the show.”
A judge called Scott’s post “a classic rape threat” but found it fell short of being an imminent threat of violence.
Scott defended his record, saying he has been transparent throughout his career. He said he apologized to the former agent for his post, calling it “a weak moment” that wasn’t meant to be threatening.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said. “I believe the ones I’ve made were very minor. We learn from them and move forward.”
The Biden administration forced Scott out of his role at Border Patrol in 2021 after he objected to directives to stop using terms such as “illegal alien.”
On Wednesday, both Democrats and Republicans congratulated Scott on his nomination. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested that the attempt to prevent his nomination from moving forward wouldn’t succeed.
“I apologize for the smear campaign,” he told Scott.
Scott’s nomination hearing comes as Republicans advance budget legislation in the House and Senate that would provide billions of dollars to CBP. Illegal border crossings have plummeted over the last few months, federal data show.
The Trump administration eliminated many internal oversight bodies in Homeland Security, including the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which investigated allegations of wrongdoing.
Trump administration plans to remove nearly 700 unaccompanied migrant children, senator says
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is planning to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. without their parents, according to a letter sent Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, and the Central American country said it was ready to take them in.
The removals would violate the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s “child welfare mandate and this country’s long-established obligation to these children,” Wyden told Angie Salazar, acting director of the office within the Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for migrant children who arrive in the U.S. alone.
“This move threatens to separate children from their families, lawyers, and support systems, to thrust them back into the very conditions they are seeking refuge from, and to disappear vulnerable children beyond the reach of American law and oversight,” the Democratic senator wrote, asking for the deportation plans to be terminated.
It is another step in the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement efforts, which include plans to surge officers to Chicago for an immigration crackdown, ramping up deportations and ending protections for people who have had permission to live and work in the United States.
Guatemalan Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Martínez said Friday that the government has told the U.S. it is willing to receive hundreds of Guatemalan minors who arrived unaccompanied to the United States and are being held in U.S. facilities.
Guatemala is particularly concerned about minors who could age out of the facilities for children and be sent to adult detention centers, he said. The exact number of children to be returned remains in flux, but they are currently discussing a little over 600. He said no date has been set yet for their return.
That would be almost double what Guatemala previously agreed to. The head of the country’s immigration service said last month that the government was looking to repatriate 341 unaccompanied minors who were being held in U.S. facilities.
“The idea is to bring them back before they reach 18 years old so that they are not taken to an adult detention center,” Guatemala Immigration Institute Director Danilo Rivera said at the time. He said it would be done at Guatemala’s expense and would be a form of voluntary return.
The plan was announced by President Bernardo Arévalo, who said then that the government had a moral and legal obligation to advocate for the children. His comments came days after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Guatemala.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest move, which was first reported by CNN.
Quoting unidentified whistleblowers, Wyden’s letter said children who do not have a parent or legal guardian as a sponsor or who don’t have an asylum case already underway “will be forcibly removed from the country.”
The idea of repatriating such a large number of children to their home country also raised concerns with activists who work with children navigating the immigration process.
“We are outraged by the Trump administration’s renewed assault on the rights of immigrant children,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, president and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “We are not fooled by their attempt to mask these efforts as mere ‘repatriations.’ This is yet another calculated attempt to sever what little due process remains in the immigration system.”
Santana, Seitz and Gonzalez write for the Associated Press. Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas. AP writers Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City and Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
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Senate confirms Bisignano to lead Social Security Administration
WASHINGTON — Wall Street veteran Frank Bisignano was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday to lead the Social Security Administration, taking over at a turbulent time for the agency that provides benefits to more than 70 million Americans.
The Senate confirmed Bisignano in a 53-47 vote.
Bisignano’s confirmation comes after a months-long series of announcements at the Social Security Administration of mass federal worker layoffs, cuts to programs, office closures and a planned cut to nationwide Social Security phone services, which were eventually walked back.
Many of the changes are driven by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire advisor Elon Musk, who said this week that he is preparing to wind down his role with the administration. The upheaval has made Social Security a major focus of Democrats, including former President Biden, who said in his first public speech since leaving office that Republican President Trump has “taken a hatchet” to the program.
Bisignano, a self-professed “DOGE person,” has served as chair of Fiserv, a payments and financial services tech firm since 2020. He is a onetime defender of corporate policies to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination. Bisignano takes over from the agency’s acting commissioner, DOGE supporter Leland Dudek. Bisignano’s term ends in January 2031.
Asked during his March confirmation hearing whether Social Security should be privatized, Bisignano responded: “I’ve never heard a word of it, and I’ve never thought about it.”
Democrats and activists have for weeks railed against Bisignano’s confirmation, holding rallies and other events protesting his nomination.
During the final roll call vote, Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden called Bisignano “unfit” to be the steward of Americans’ Social Security benefits. Wyden said Trump wants Bisignano to “gut” Social security, and that Republicans who support Bisignano’s confirmation would be responsible if their grandmother misses a Social Security check and can’t pay rent.
“By confirming Mr. Bisignano, the Senate will be signing a death sentence to Social Security as we know it today,” Wyden said.
The chaos at the the agency began shortly after acting commissioner Michelle King stepped down in February, a move that came after DOGE sought access to Social Security recipient information. That prompted a lawsuit by labor unions and retirees, who asked a federal court to issue an emergency order limiting DOGE’s access to Social Security data.
Most recently, the full panel of judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 9 to 6 not to lift restrictions on the access that DOGE has to Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans.
Also in February, the agency announced plans to cut 7,000 people from the agency payroll through layoffs, employee reassignments and an offer of voluntary separation agreements, as part of an intensified effort to shrink the size of the federal workforce.
Dudek also announced a plan to require in-person identity checks for millions of new and existing recipients while simultaneously closing government offices. That sparked a furor among lawmakers, advocacy groups and program recipients who are worried that the government is placing unnecessary barriers in front of an already vulnerable population. That plan has since been rolled back.
The Social Security Administration provides benefits to roughly 72.5 million people, including retirees and children.
Hussein writes for the Associated Press.
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Trump pick to lead CBP accused of ‘cover-up’ over death of man at California border
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s nominee to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection is facing scrutiny for his role in an investigation into the death of a migrant who was brutally beaten by Border Patrol agents in 2010.
Critics allege Rodney Scott participated in a cover-up and is unqualified to lead the agency. His defenders say he acted appropriately and called him a fine choice to head one of the largest federal agencies with more than 60,000 employees, including the Border Patrol and agents at ports of entry.
Rodney Scott, who led the U.S. Border Patrol until 2021, faced questions about the death from senators Wednesday during a Senate Finance Committee hearing to consider his nomination.
“Today’s hearing is to determine whether Rodney Scott possesses that experience, along with the strength of character to be trusted with one of the most essential jobs in government,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “The evidence shows that he falls short.”
Scott was acting deputy chief patrol agent of the San Diego Border Patrol Sector when agents preparing to deport Anastasio Hernández Rojas beat and tased him in a walkway at the San Ysidro Port of Entry until he stopped breathing, court records show. He died in a hospital two days later, leaving behind a wife and five children.
Federal officials said Hernández Rojas, 42, fought with the agents attempting to remove him from the country.
Last week Wyden sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security seeking documents related to the death and investigation. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s response Tuesday did not include documents. She called Wyden’s “uninformed” account of Scott’s alleged role in the investigation “infuriating and offensive.”
Noem said Scott was not at the scene when the incident occurred, had limited involvement with an internal investigative team that reviewed the case, and didn’t impede external investigations or conceal facts.
“No less than seven local and federal investigatory bodies reviewed the circumstances of Mr. Hernández Rojas’ death, and none found evidence of actions that were inconsistent with law, regulation, or policy,” Noem wrote.
Roxanna Altholz, director of the Human Rights Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, which represents the family of Hernández Rojas, said in a statement that the family has never received a full accounting of how the investigation was handled.
“His family has spent years asking the same question: How can 17 agents of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, Customs and Border Protection, beat to death a man in public in front of dozens of eyewitnesses on videotape without consequence?” she wrote.
In 2017, the government settled a federal lawsuit with Hernández Rojas’ family for $1 million.
In a landmark decision Wednesday, an international human rights commission found that the U.S. is responsible for Hernández Rojas’ killing and that a cover-up followed. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — an autonomous judicial body within the Organization of American States — called on the U.S. to reopen the criminal investigation of the agents involved.
During the hearing, Wyden called out Noem for not producing the documents he requested.
“The secretary responded with a letter that said Mr. Scott was basically a perfect angel and all the allegations against him are false, but produced zero documents that I requested to back it up,” Wyden said. “In the first 100 days of this administration it seems like this agency is practically allergic to the truth.”
Before Wednesday’s hearing, James Wong, a former deputy assistant commissioner of CBP’s office of internal affairs, wrote to Wyden with concern about Scott’s handling of Hernandez Rojas’ death.
Units known as critical incident teams (CIT), which were disbanded in 2022, investigated use-of-force incidents in the Border Patrol. They were “designed to mitigate liability for Border Patrol senior management and to present Border Patrol in the best possible light,” Wong wrote.
The team used an administrative subpoena, which Scott signed, to obtain Hernández Rojas’ medical records. Wong said that “was blatantly unlawful” because “such subpoenas should only be used for the very limited purpose of examining imports and exports, not for the collection of medical evidence or to search a premises.”
“By virtue of his position, Mr. Scott would have overseen all CIT operations on the case and all CIT information would have filtered through him to CBP headquarters,” Wong wrote. “This was not an investigation, it was a cover-up — one Mr. Scott supervised.”
Noem, in her letter to Wyden, wrote that “Mr. Scott’s signature, and the execution of the administrative subpoena he signed, were consistent with law and agency policy.”
According to court records, officials at the scene erased photos and videos from witnesses’ phones. The critical incident team declined to give San Diego police Hernández Rojas’ medical records. Footage of the scene was written over with new recordings.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) asked Scott whether he did “anything in that case to interfere with the investigation.”
“Absolutely not,” Scott replied.
Wyden also took issue with other incidents in Scott’s past, saying he has not learned from his mistakes.
One of those was Scott’s membership in a private Facebook group for Border Patrol agents with more than 9,000 members that contained racist and sexually violent posts.
Wyden also cited Scott’s response to a former Border Patrol agent and survivor of sexual assault who posted criticism of Scott on X.
Scott responded with a post of his own:
“I investigated all your allegations. Not a crumb of evidence could be found to support any of them. But I did find out a lot about you. Lean back, close your eyes and just enjoy the show.”
A judge called Scott’s post “a classic rape threat” but found it fell short of being an imminent threat of violence.
Scott defended his record, saying he has been transparent throughout his career. He said he apologized to the former agent for his post, calling it “a weak moment” that wasn’t meant to be threatening.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said. “I believe the ones I’ve made were very minor. We learn from them and move forward.”
The Biden administration forced Scott out of his role at Border Patrol in 2021 after he objected to directives to stop using terms such as “illegal alien.”
On Wednesday, both Democrats and Republicans congratulated Scott on his nomination. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested that the attempt to prevent his nomination from moving forward wouldn’t succeed.
“I apologize for the smear campaign,” he told Scott.
Scott’s nomination hearing comes as Republicans advance budget legislation in the House and Senate that would provide billions of dollars to CBP. Illegal border crossings have plummeted over the last few months, federal data show.
The Trump administration eliminated many internal oversight bodies in Homeland Security, including the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which investigated allegations of wrongdoing.
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