The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona accused the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of abusing its power and implementing tactics of racial profiling at federal highway checkpoints near the Mexican border.

Instead of working to prevent drugs and unauthorized immigrants from traveling north, the ACLU noted that newly released complaints filed against the CBP repeatedly accused checkpoint border agents of improper gunplay, racial profiling, excessive force and verbal abuse.

Following a ACLU lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was required to release almost 6,000 pages of complaints, arrest statistics and other records in recent months against the CBP. The data documented encounters between drivers and border agents from January 2011 to August 2014 and illustrate the CBP as an abusive agency with little oversight. As a result, the ACLU says this has enabled some agents working along the southern border to operate outside of the law without facing meaningful consequences on many occasions.

Only one of the 142 complaints obtained by the ACLU appears to have resulted in disciplinary action, which punished an agent with a one-day suspension for unjustifiably stopping a vehicle that was driven by the son of a retired Border Patrol agent.

ACLU lawyer James Lyall told the New York Times that the records further validate the complaints made by border residents, and also suggest that CBP had underreported the number of civil rights complaints it had received.

"C.B.P.'s own records paint a disturbing picture of lawlessness and impunity, in which the agency continually operates without any regard for accepted best practices, and agents commit widespread abuses knowing they won't be held accountable," Lyall said.

Agency officials have not responded to the complaints and instead, directed reporters to remarks made by Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske in April, talking about his effort to prioritize transparency and accountability.

"I am taking steps to make transparency and accountability hallmarks of my tenure at C.B.P.," Kerlikowske said during a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "The public's trust in us depends on it."