with a statement highlighting the fact that respect for detainees is taught in training and consistently reinforced during an agent 's career . `` Mistreatment or agent misconduct will not be tolerated in any way , '' the statement said . `` We appreciate the efforts of individuals to report concerns as soon as they arise and we will continue to cooperate fully with any effort to investigate allegations of agent misconduct or mistreatment of individuals . '' The interviews were conducted with migrants in Naco , Nogales and Agua Prieta , in Mexico 's Sonora state who were in border patrol custody . Although No More Deaths conducted thousands of interviews , in places like Nogales they could only speak with a fraction of the migrants who crossed . This raised the issue of how representative their sample was , said Katerina Sinclair , a statistical consultant on the report . But in Naco , a smaller town , they were able to speak with enough migrants to have a representative sample . So the report stays away from making conclusions about percentages except for the subset of interviewees from Naco . But despite the difficulties with such an
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Back in 2006 , volunteers with No More Deaths , a humanitarian organization dedicated to helping migrants along the Arizona-Mexico border , began hearing the same stories from many who had been in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol . Thwarted would-be unauthorized immigrants spoke of being denied water or food during their custody . Others said they were beaten . The organization started properly documenting these allegations , and the stories added up to nearly 13,000 testimonies whose results were released in a report this week . The findings went beyond denial of food and water . Migrants held by the Border Patrol spoke of being exposed to extreme heat or cold , sleep deprivation , death threats , and psychological abuse such as blaring music with lyrics about migrants dying in the desert . A previous report by No More Deaths in 2008 raised the same concerns , but now the number of recorded cases point to a systematic problem . `` By this point , the overwhelming weight of the corroborated evidence should eliminate any doubt that Border Patrol abuse is widespread , '' the report states . The Border Patrol responded