Candidate for CBP head tour of questions about the death of San Ysidro

Rodney Scott, the former head of the US border police in San Diego and President Donald Trump's candidate as Commissioner of the US -Tunus and Border Protection, asked questions during a sometimes controversial hearing on Wednesday's financial committee during the Senate financial committee in San Diego, who largely focused on his term in San Diego.

Scott's role in the study of the death of Anastasio Hernández Rojas 2010 in the San Ysidro input port attracted the biggest exam. Scott said on Wednesday that he “does not (not) (not). During the hearing, the news that an International Human Rights Commission, who had spent the review of Hernández Rojas' death for years, published a pioneering decision that the US federal brokers had violated death and subsequent investigations against international human rights laws.

From 2017 to 2020, Scott served as head of the San Diego sector of Border Patrol and then acted as the head of the entire agency, which is a component of CBP, for the last year of Trump's first term. The Republicans, who have a majority in the Finance Committee, stated that they would approved his nomination.

After approval of the committee, Scott's nomination will go to the full Senate to confirm. If confirmed, he will monitor around 60,000 employees in an agency that is part of the Ministry of Homeland Protection.

The Senator of Oregon, Ron Wyden, the rendered democrat in the financial committee, sent a letter to Kristi NoEM in the home protection authority last week, in which he found that “serious concerns about the gross failure of integrity and leadership (Scott) in connection with Hernández Rojas. Hernández Rojas died in May 2010 after the federal authorities in San Ysidro entrance port and knelt on him. Diego were held back by the San Diego police.

The von Hernández Rojas family included a lawsuit against the federal government for $ 1 million, and the officials and agents involved in his death were not charged criminals. For years, his family has been looking for justice through a legal case from the Inter -American Human Rights Commission, which is part of the organization of American states and promotes and protects human rights in the American hemisphere ”.

In the report published on Wednesday morning, this commission found that border commissioners Hernández Rojas applied, excessive violence, while he was held back, discriminated, carried out a biased and incomplete examination and denied his family judiciary, all of which were violated against international laws and protocols. The report that was the first of its kind that examined an out -of -court murder by the US criminal prosecution did not specially name Scott.

During the hearing on Wednesday, Scott confirmed that he signed the administrative advance in question. However, he testified that it was a standard procedure law that he had concluded after the summons had been checked from the legal counsel.

Scott joined the border patrol in 1992 and spent most of his career in San Diego. Trump called him head of the border patrol in January 2020. He retired when he was displaced by the bids administration in 2021 and spent the next few years as a violent critic of President Joe Biden and his border policy.

“I am very proud of this green uniform that I wore,” he told the committee during his opening speech on Wednesday. “If confirmed, I will take on a leading role in America that will provide America with real border security.”

He said CBP's task was to “not only protect a line on the map, but also to defend the American people, our values ​​and our way of life”.

Under the survey of Senator Ben Ray Luján, a democrat from New Mexico, Scott admitted that most drugs from Mexico exceed the US border at the named entry ports in vehicles. He also spoke about the role of customs and border protection in the protection of goods and traveled in the middle of the changing tariff policy of the Trump administration.

The Republican senators, including Ron Johnson from Wisconsin and Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, praised Scott for his former border patrol service and his leadership and optimistic that he would be maintained by Trump's priorities. Johnson said Scott was “smeared” to “distract the American public from Trump to secure the border”.

Wyden questioned Scott's lack of experience with the customs authority after he had looked after his entire career in the border patrol, and raised his approved membership in a Facebook group in which border protection officers shared jokes about migrant deaths and racist and sexist comments. But most of the questions from Oregon's Senator focused on Scott's role in the Hernández Rojas case and a social media post from 2021, which ended up in front of a judge in San Diego.

According to the court files in a case in which an injunction was requested, he tweeted in an interaction that began to remind Governor Gavino Newsom with Scott's support, an answer to an ex-Grat strip police officer who has been raped at the academy that she should close and simply enjoy the show “. Not considered a threat and described himself on the “active imagination” of the ex-agent, but the judge called him a “very, very frequent” rape.

“Perhaps you were the only person in the world who has never heard of” Lier “and refers to rape,” said Robert Longstreth, judge of the Seni Diego Supreme Court, according to a copy of the hearing in November 2021.

“Will this committee accept a CBP commissioner who casually threatens women in this way?” Asked Wyden during the hearing on Wednesday. “Our character standards cannot have fallen so low that this can be rejected as old news.”

Scott said on Wednesday that he did not see the post as a threat and said that after the hearing at ex-agent Jenn Budd, he apologized to the courtroom. Budd told the Union Tribune that this was not the case.

“He never apologized,” Budd wrote in an e -mail. “He lied to court … He promised the judge that he would take the rape -tweet and he never did.”

Budd also said that it was “reprehensible that (Wyden) used my rape in a hearing in the congress and never contacted me.”

As for the Hernández Rojas case, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the Republican Senator of Idaho, Mike Crapo, said a letter from NoEM, who deletes Scott from misconduct. His actions “voted in accordance with his duties, the law and the professional standards,” said Crapo and quoted Noem's letter.

Wyden said that Noem's letter had painted Scott as a “perfect angel” without actually providing the documents that he requested for the proper supervision.

In Wyden's letter to Noem and again during the hearing on Wednesday, he quoted former high -ranking CBP officials who criticized the summons signed by Scott. James Tomasheck, the deputy commissioner of CBP at the time of the death of Hernández Rojas, said that this type of use of an administrative summons was “illegally and potentially contemptuous”, wrote Wyden, referring to court documents from the case of human rights. James Wong, who was the deputy deputy commissioner for CBP interior matters at the time, described the use of the summons “inappropriate, if not criminal,” wrote Wyden, citing court documents.

The family and lawyers of Hernández Rojas plan to speak publicly about the results of the human rights commission on Thursday.

In an explanation before the hearing on Wednesday and before the Commission's report was published, the family's lawyers said that “the recording is condemned in the case” and that Scott's role is concerned about his integrity in order to lead the nation's largest law enforcement authority.

“No agent has ever been held accountable for the murder of Anastasio or for the subsequent disability of the judiciary,” said Andrea Guerrero by Alliance San Diego and Roxanna Altholz from UC Berkeley Law Human Rights Clinic. “The abuse and impunity, which has occurred under Scott's command, raises serious questions about Mr. Scott's integrity as a guide and should influence the examination of the Senate.”

It is not yet known if the financial committee will vote on Scott's confirmation or if the complete Senate would vote if the committee submits its approval.

Originally published: April 30, 2025 at 6:04 p.m. PDT