IACHR Holds United States Responsible for Anastasio Hernández Rojas Killing and Cover-Up — 15 Years After CBP Agents Beat and Tased Him While Handcuffed

Opening Paragraph

On April 28, 2025, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a landmark decision in Family Members of Anastasio Hernández Rojas v. United States, holding the United States responsible for the 2010 killing of Anastasio Hernández Rojas and the 15-year cover-up that followed. The IACHR found that CBP agents tortured Hernández Rojas, used excessive force while he was restrained, discriminated against him based on national origin, conducted a biased and incomplete investigation, and denied his family justice. The decision was publicly announced May 7, 2025.

What Happened / Key Facts

The incident (May 28, 2010): Anastasio Hernández Rojas, a 42-year-old Mexican national and longtime San Diego resident, father of five U.S. citizen children, was beaten, kicked, punched, and tasered by approximately a dozen CBP agents at the San Ysidro Port of Entry while handcuffed. He died of cardiac arrest three days later. San Diego Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide. No agent was criminally charged; the DOJ declined to prosecute.

The cover-up (2010–2022): The San Diego Sector Critical Incident Investigative Team (CIIT) — operating under then-Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott — arrived on scene and was present 15 hours before San Diego Police Department was notified. The CIIT allegedly erased eyewitness cell-phone video, destroyed government surveillance footage, altered government documents provided to SDPD, illegally acquired Hernández Rojas’s medical records, and intruded in autopsy proceedings. The family received a $1 million civil settlement. The IACHR case was filed as the only available accountability mechanism after domestic prosecutorial and civil rights channels were exhausted.

The IACHR ruling: The Commission’s findings in the April 28, 2025 decision, per Alliance San Diego and Democracy Now! reporting:

• CBP agents tortured Hernández Rojas in violation of international human rights law
• Use of force was excessive while he was restrained and posed no threat
• Discrimination based on national origin was a factor in the conduct
• The subsequent CBP investigation was “biased and incomplete” — a direct finding against the CIIT’s conduct
• 15 years of proceedings produced no accountability; the Commission held the United States responsible for the denial of justice

Connection to Scott’s confirmation: The IACHR decision was announced May 7, 2025. The Senate confirmed Rodney Scott as CBP Commissioner on June 18, 2025 — seven weeks later. Senator Ron Wyden publicly opposed the nomination citing both the IACHR ruling and documentary evidence of Scott’s supervisory role in the cover-up the Commission found violated international law.

Why This Event Matters

The IACHR ruling is the first international human rights body finding specifically holding the United States responsible for both the killing and the cover-up in a named Border Patrol use-of-force case. It provides independent primary-source corroboration for the structural argument that CBP’s Critical Incident Teams operated as cover-up units rather than neutral investigators — not from advocates or whistleblowers but from an international judicial body reviewing the full evidentiary record over 15 years.

The ruling arrived during the Trump-2 CBP confirmation process, making it a directly usable public-record finding against the nominee who supervised the cover-up. The Senate confirmed Scott anyway, making the post-ruling confirmation itself a data point: the accountability architecture did not interrupt the personnel-rotation pipeline.

For the CIT-to-OPR rotation investigation, the IACHR ruling closes a significant evidentiary gap: the “biased and incomplete investigation” finding applies specifically to the CIIT’s conduct in a case where specific CIIT members (Rodney Scott as supervisor; Joe Vaiasuso as named agent; others unnamed in the ruling) are documented participants. The ruling creates an international legal record that names the institutional actors, which is the strongest available primary-source anchor for the “cover-up by design” framing.

Broader Context

The Hernández Rojas IACHR proceeding ran parallel to the GAO investigation (commissioned January 2022; published May 2024 as GAO-24-106148) into CIT operations. The two proceedings — one by an international human rights commission, one by a federal watchdog — arrived at convergent findings: the CIT investigation was structurally biased, operated without legal authority, and reproduced cover-up conditions. Neither proceeding produced criminal charges against named individuals.

The HBO documentary Critical Incident (December 2025) brought the case to general public attention simultaneously with the Trump-2 administration’s confirmation process for Scott, creating the unusual situation in which a nominee’s documented cover-up role was under current documentary and international legal scrutiny at the moment of confirmation.

Research Gaps

• Full IACHR decision text (not publicly accessible via this research pass; Alliance San Diego may have the PDF)
• Whether the IACHR ruling names specific CIIT members beyond Rodney Scott
• Whether the IACHR ruling triggered any U.S. government response beyond the Senate confirmation vote proceeding

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