Forget your personal feelings about immigration policy for the rest of this article. Ignore your initial feelings when you hear the phrase “border patrol” and start to think of border patrol agents as any other human being, capable of both good and evil.

This is not an article about general policy; this is an article about human decency, about what is right and what is unequivocally wrong. Without argument, cold-blooded and unjustifiable murder falls in the latter category, and no amount of good can rectify it, yet one particular government agency has decided not to punish the murders in its midst at all.

The U.S. Border Patrol is suffering from chronic corruption issues, with officers blatantly breaking laws and displaying a lack of morals expected of stereotypical criminals, but not the “good guys.”

While I don’t want to discount the officers who follow the rules and actually do their jobs, the overall lack of accountability should be of considerable concern to any citizen who believes in accountability under the law.

The relationship between the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Department of Justice (DOJ) is complex, but essentially the CBP hides as much information as it can from the DOJ. Misconduct is handled within the agency and only infractions labeled “mission compromising,” a label which is defined by standards set by CBP, are required to be reported to Congress.

Bills attempting to place checks on the CBP have been introduced to the House of Representatives many times in recent years, yet I was unable to find one that had progressed past the committee stage. One bill introduced in December 2015, H.R.4303 Border Security and Accountability Act of 2015, was sent to the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere in February, where it currently resides.

The bill would force CBP to publicize information regarding migrant deaths occurring along the U.S.-Mexico border, issue concrete policies “regarding the use of force,” “comply with Department of Justice Guidance for Federal Law Enforcement Agencies,” and “establish standards for the conditions of confinement for children in CBP custody.”

How is this not a law already? This sounds like common sense and ought to have been established a long time ago. Yet this necessary bill is locked up in committee just like the bills that came before it. And the website GovTrack gives the bill only a two percent chance of making it past committee and then only a one percent chance of being enacted.

Behold the American legislative system: a logical and arguably necessary bill will die in committee due to party politics, lobbying, and/or citizen apathy.

Unfortunately, the lack of consequences for border patrol is made more complicated by the nationality of the victims. Whether or not multiple Mexican citizens have been killed by border patrol agents, many still in Mexico when they were shot, is not up for debate. The CBP has recognized several such cases, and they barely make an effort to justify the murder to the victims’ families and the public.

Take one such case in 2012, in which CBP justified the death of a 16 year old Mexican boy, who was on Mexican soil, by claiming the victim had been throwing rocks at agents.

The autopsy of the victim revealed the boy had been shot an excessive ten times in the back. And through the border fence, no less. Now this is just my opinion, but the act of throwing rocks is not a death-worthy crime, at least not in a civilized society. Maybe if we were still living as cavemen, but I like to think our species has evolved a little since then.

Whether or not the punishment matched the crime hardly matters, though, since further investigation also revealed that the boy would not have been physically able to clear any rocks over the fence given the height of that particular section of the border.

Another flaw in this story concerns the CBP Policy Handbook (2010), which states deadly force should only be used “when the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to… another person.”

So, this death would be considered a violation of CBP policy, right? If only the CBP publicized the details of deaths along the border so officers could be held accountable for violating the policies. Wait, there’s a bill for that! Which is going to die in committee, so back to square one.

For any incident of misconduct, the CBP can give a fabricated report, shrug their shoulders when it is criticized, and laugh at the idea of punishing the officer in question. Our country is funding a group of armed individuals who are, for all practical purposes, untouchable by our laws.

Regardless of one’s personal stance on immigration and border patrol, people should be held accountable for misconduct and crimes regardless of their profession or the nationality of their victim.