In the first broad international scrutiny of U.S. treatment of migrants, a United Nations human rights expert took testimony about worker abuse, government raids, family separations and other issues as he wrapped up a two-day visit to Los Angeles on Thursday.
Jorge A. Bustamante, U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, met with day laborers, restaurant workers, farm labor advocates, gang-intervention specialists and others in San Diego and Los Angeles this week at the start of a seven-city fact-finding mission undertaken at the invitation of the U.S. government. His trip will include visits to the U.S.-Mexico border and federal detention facilities, along with meetings with senior government officials, immigration attorneys, community advocates and migrants themselves.
"There is concern in the United Nations human rights community about rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States," said Bustamante, who will present his report to the world body in the next year.
Evidence of problems, he said, was the Los Angeles police response to May Day marchers in MacArthur Park this week. As an official U.N. observer, Bustamante said, he declined to participate in the marches but spoke to some who witnessed the melee.
"The way the local police physically abused marchers represents right there a violation of human rights," he said. The FBI announced Thursday that it would investigate police officers' actions caught on tape.
Richard A. Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said the United States had "nothing to hide and is comfortable showing the world our practices."
But, he added, "I certainly hope this trip doesn't take Mr. Bustamante away from very critical work needed to be done in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Burma."
Bustamante, a University of Notre Dame sociology professor who splits his time between his native Mexico and the United States, said that anti-immigrant sentiment is rising around the world as unprecedented levels of global migration have prompted a growing number of nations to adopt restrictive laws.
The United Nations estimates that global migrants number 200 million, nearly half of them workers and 40% of them undocumented. Those numbers have doubled since 1970, with the United States by far the largest haven with 35 million migrants as of 2000.
