Human Rights Violator Investigations

04 August 2008

(More than 200 violators have been caught and removed, official says)

Washington -- “The United States is not a safe haven for those who engage in violations of human rights all around the world,” says Julie Myers, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

She told reporters at a July 30 briefing at the U.S. Foreign Press Center in New York City that U.S. investigative programs are ensuring these individuals face justice.

Some 238 individuals with human rights violations have been apprehended and removed from the United States since ICE established a specialized human rights violators investigative unit in 2004.

Among ICE’s successes:

• An international investigation led to the criminal conviction and subsequent removal of Argentine army Major Ernesto Barreiro. Barreiro lied on his application for a nonimmigrant visa, saying he never had been detained for a crime in Argentina, and entered the United States in 2004. In fact, Barreiro had been charged and detained by the Argentine government in 1984 and 1987 for alleged kidnapping and acts of torture, some of which were fatal.

• ICE’s work with an immigration judge found that Bozo Jozepovic, a member of the Croatian Defense Council, had assisted in the murders of seven innocent Muslim men. Josepovic was removed from the United States.

• Ratko Maslenjak, a Bosnian Serb, was convicted and sentenced for making false statements about his prior military service on his U.S. immigration documents. ICE investigations found that Maslenjak, a former sergeant with the army of the Republika Srypska, had been part of a brigade responsible for the massacre of Bosnian Muslim refugees.

The ICE human rights violations unit has about 1,000 active investigations with about 88 countries. The majority of the active cases, Myers said, involve Central and South America, Haiti, the Balkans and Africa. The individuals involved allegedly committed crimes ranging from genocide to war crimes to severe religious persecution.

“Unfortunately,” Myers said, “far too often we see that individuals who participate in these atrocities come and seek to hide in the United States, lie on their visa applications and try to blend in, in the [American] neighborhoods.

“Our work is designed to ensure that we identify these people, prosecute them criminally where we can and then remove them from this country, to make sure the United States is not a safe haven for these individuals,” she said.

PUBLIC HELP NEEDED TO SERVE JUSTICE

Myers said there are many challenges in tracking down human rights violators who attempt to hide in the United States. The work involves sending U.S. agents abroad to talk to witnesses, many of whom are afraid to come forward and talk to official agents from either the United States or their own governments.

Sometimes the atrocities occurred so long ago that criminal convictions in the United States no longer are legally possible or evidence no longer is available.

Even with these potential obstacles, justice can be served, especially if the public is willing to help, Myers said.

Sometimes victims of human rights violations who have come to the United States as refugees experience the shock of seeing their tormentor on an American street. “We had a case where somebody recognized the bellhop at a hotel as somebody who had participated in violence against her in, I believe, Rwanda,” Myers recalled.

Members of nongovernmental organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, also provide information about human rights violators that might have come into the United States, she said.

“We believe more sources can come from the people in this country,” Myers said. With that goal in mind, ICE is putting out a public service announcement encouraging people who live in the United States to report human rights violators who may be living in their midst.

“You don't have to be living on your street with someone who committed an act of atrocity against you in a different country,” Myers said.

To help prevent human rights violators from ever getting a U.S. visa in the first place, the United States is working to build greater capacity for an active database that contains information on these violators, Myers said.

For those violators who become U.S. citizens, there is a process in which they can become “denaturalized” as U.S. citizens. This has been done many times in the past, Myers said, with former members of the World War II Nazi regime.

For more information, see the ICE fact sheet Human Rights Violator Investigations.