A delegation of U.S. officials is at the United Nations office in Geneva this week to address the Human Rights Committee. The officials will answer questions from the committee about how various policies impact human rights in the U.S., including at the border. 

The UN panel is made up of independent rights experts focused on whether countries are honoring the International Covenant ON Civil and Political Rights — a rights treaty signed by the U.S. and other countries.

The panel convened to hear U.S. issues on Tuesday and continued for another session on Wednesday. In the first, three hour session, experts asked U.S. officials around gun control, reproductive rights and excessive use of force by U.S. law enforcement. 

Yigezu Atnafe Yigezu — one of the commission's panel experts — said the U.S. lacked the legal framework to effectively prosecute excessive use of force by law enforcement. 

"Moreover, the .. objectively reasonable legal standard set for police use-of-force, as well as the doctrine of qualified immunity set by Supreme Court rulings, has also impeded accountability in several criminal courts," he said. 

Andrea Guerrero with the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

"One hundred years have passed and we’ve never had a Border Patrol agent held accountable for killing somebody while on duty or violating their rights, and so we have systemic and longstanding abuse and impunity by US law enforcement," she said. 

Guerrero's group was one of several U.S. civil societies that staged a walk-out of a meeting with U.S. officials one day before the commission meeting with U.S. Mission began. Guerrero says the groups have already met with officials over Zoom before coming to the U.N. to speak in person, and want to see action, rather than speaking more.

"The United States has fallen far short of its obligations and decades have passed," she said. "The U.S. must seek to change its policies and laws in order to protect our human rights. 

Several community members from Guerrero’s group testified in Geneva this week, including Marisol García Alcántara, a Mexican woman shot in the head by a Border Patrol agent in Nogales, Arizona in 2021.