This week the SCJN validated article 19 of the National Detention Registry Law and its transitory article 5. Article 19 establishes that the authorities entrusted to public security that make an arrest must notify the competent police corporation so that it can carry out the necessary search. However, transitory article 5 indicates that this instruction does not apply to the Armed Forces entrusted with said public security tasks, when resolving an unconstitutionality action promoted by the CNDH in 2019.
The SCJN resolved that the Armed Forces must directly deliver the reports to the national registry of arrests of the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, without this forcing them to notify any police authority of an arrest.
This is a complex decision that could lead to the violation of human rights, the commission of arbitrary actions against people detained by military forces is not new, so it is essential to talk about the national registry of detentions. This base where all the authorities linked to public security have the obligation to provide all the information related to the detained individual, which, beyond serving as a statistical exercise, activates a series of obligations contained in codes and regulations that support due process in our country.
It is particularly important, since it is at that moment that the actions of the public security authorities are documented, it is during the detention that the protection mechanism for people under arrest is activated, it is the beginning of their right to defense as a detained person.
It is interesting how the CNDH is the one that carries out the challenge, based on main observations, since they are subject to interpretation when finding regulatory omissions between the constitutional reforms and secondary laws, among which the actions of the Armed Forces are based. The prevalence between both legal bases is questioned, which in its interpretation can become contradictory, between the obligation that the Armed Forces, in the development of their security tasks, comply with the record of arrests by themselves or if they have it to report to a police authority.
It is not a minor issue if we consider that the actions of the Armed Forces are questionable, taking into account that their auditing and control is carried out internally, which opens the field to opacity, an unacceptable issue in a democracy.
