Frontera Federation Files Complaint Against Border Patrol Over Retaliatory Harassment

Complaint to the Office of Professional Responsibility documents a monthlong pattern of abuse targeting Frontera Federation staff member

EAGLE PASS, TX — Frontera Federation filed a formal complaint with Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) yesterday documenting a sustained pattern of stops, searches, surveillance, and detention of a Frontera Federation staff member over the past month.

Border Patrol personnel in the Eagle Pass and Big Bend sectors of Texas subjected Meg Stuart, the organization's Research and Data Analyst, to what may amount to targeted harassment in response to Stuart’s work documenting the deadly deterrence infrastructure the federal government is installing along the Rio Grande. 

The attached complaint asks OPR to investigate agent misconduct and whether the encounters are connected to Stuart's constitutionally protected activity. OPR has acknowledged receipt of the complaint.

“Being told I was under investigation for human smuggling while I was researching on public land, having a helicopter follow me for a mile, having agents tell me I couldn't legally record them while they tore apart my truck — none of that is about border security,” said Meg Stuart, Research and Data Analyst at Frontera Federation. “It's about instilling fear in our community and trying to make us feel helpless in the face of their violence and brutality against the land and its people.” 

Frontera Federation's complaint details seven separate incidents between May 16 and June 16, 2026, several of which directly followed Stuart's public statements or their  decision to decline consent to a search. They include an extensive vehicle search at an interior checkpoint after agents questioned Stuart about their associations and work in Eagle Pass and a roadside stop near Presidio in which an agent told Stuart the agency had been tracking them.

The pattern escalated sharply on June 15, when three Border Patrol agents ran up on Stuart after following them with a helicopter on a state wildlife trail. The agents detained Stuart, telling them Stuart was under investigation for human smuggling. As the helicopter continued to track overhead, agents falsely told Stuart that their vehicle was unregistered and followed them for over a mile back to their truck. By the time they reached the vehicle six Border Patrol trucks and roughly a dozen agents had been deployed and surrounded the lone Stuart. 

Stuart's monitoring work has focused on the rollout of the federal government's river buoy barriers in Eagle Pass — devices Frontera Federation has previously condemned as deadly deterrence infrastructure built to drown migrants rather than deter them safely. 

“We are watching federal agents kill U.S. citizens in the street, use tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protesters, and charge people with conspiracy and terrorism-adjacent crimes for opposing immigration raids, all while telling the rest of us that documenting or criticizing these agencies is itself suspicious,” said Ari Sawyer, Co-Director of Frontera Federation. “That is not how a democracy treats its own people; it is how a government plunges into authoritarianism.”

The complaint comes at a time when the national climate has grown increasingly dangerous for people who document, monitor, or protest immigration enforcement. Since January 2026, Border Patrol and ICE agents have fatally shot six people and injured another 14. In Minnesota, the American Civil Liberties Union has compiled declarations from more than eighty community members, observers, and journalists describing surveillance, intimidation, and aggressive tactics by federal agents directed at people simply filming or witnessing enforcement activity. 

Just this week, federal prosecutors in Minnesota charged fifteen people connected to protests against the federal immigration operation in Minneapolis, the latest in an effort to use the legal system to chill free speech and bludgeon those who would defend the lives of their neighbors.

“I'm not going to stop, but no one should have to weigh their safety against their right to document what their own government is doing,” Stuart said.

About Frontera Federation

Frontera Federation is a binational organization working to defend the human rights of border communities and migrants on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.