From News Nation:
“‘US Welcome Patrol’: How some
border agents are struggling with Biden’s policy shift”
Some U.S. border patrol agents
are so frustrated with President Joe Biden’s more liberal border policies that
they are considering early retirement, while other disgruntled colleagues are
buying unofficial coins that say ‘U.S. Welcome Patrol.’ Interviews with
a dozen current and former agents highlight growing dissatisfaction among some
rank and file members of the agency over Biden’s swift reversal of some of
former President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies. Since Biden took
office, border apprehensions have risen sharply. Some of that
frustration is coalescing into opposition to Biden’s pick to lead the border
patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The nominee is Tucson Police
Chief Chris Magnus, who still needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The
discontent was partly reflected in an unusual memo from the acting Border
Patrol chief last month, who objected to a new directive to stop using the term
‘alien’ when referring to migrants, saying it would hurt agents’ morale. The
interviews provide an anecdotal snapshot of the mood within border patrol and,
as such, do not represent the views of all agents. One agent who spoke to
Reuters on the condition of anonymity said “there are always going to be
changes” between presidential administrations and that agents are “used to it.”
But any internal strife could complicate plans Magnus may have to implement
and reshape border and asylum policy. Criticism from even a small number of
agents could also bolster Republican efforts to use concerns over illegal
immigration to rally supporters ahead of the 2022 congressional elections.
Brandon Judd, president of the
National Border Patrol Council, the labor union that represents three-quarters
of the roughly 20,000 border patrol agents, sharply criticized Biden in a news
conference with Republican senators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The union
endorsed Trump in the 2020 election and still supports his restrictionist
policies. “I can confidently say that President Biden owns this crisis,” Judd
said, referring to the recent spike in border crossers. “It is his fault.” The
97-year-old border patrol agency has been whipsawed by policy changes under
Republican and Democratic administrations that have required them to frequently
modify their approach to migrants they encounter at the border.
But a number of the agents
interviewed said they had never experienced such a dramatic pendulum swing. Discontent
in the ranks has already led some agents to consider early retirement, six of
them said. Voluntary retirements within border patrol are set to outpace last
year if they continue at the current rate, according to agency data. Rosemarie
Pepperdine, a border patrol agent working in Casa Grande, Arizona, is one of
those who said she was considering taking early retirement. “We have so many
people coming across, and then we’re out there killing ourselves to catch them,
rescue them or whatever it is, and then they’re being released,” she said. “Why
even bother?” Asked about the agents’ frustration, a Biden administration
official said the president’s approach was rooted in solutions and effective
management. The opposition to Magnus from within the agency derives in part
from an incident in 2017, when a Honduran migrant escaped from a Tucson
hospital while a border agent was looking at his phone. Magnus’ police
department dispatched search teams and helicopters, police records show. After
they determined the migrant had likely left the area, they called off the
manhunt, according to Tucson’s assistant police chief, Kevin Hall. The border
patrol wanted to use a police station to set up a command post to aid the
search. But that was rejected by police, who according to Hall felt that was
unnecessary because the border patrol had their own facilities. He said police
also wanted to avoid attracting pro-immigrant protesters who were congregating
at the hospital. Border patrol union officials were outraged, writing on
Facebook at the time that Magnus’ police department “put politics over rule of
law and oath of office.” Magnus “refused to work with the agency that he’s
going to be overseeing,” Judd, the union president, said in an interview with
Reuters. “That alone, in my opinion, should be disqualification.” Hall said he
felt the police department had done everything they could to find the man. “We
were all a bit surprised,” Hall said of the union’s outrage about the 2017
incident, “because the facts as we saw them were not exactly aligning with the
facts as they saw them.”
Magnus declined to comment for
this story. The son of an immigrant father from Norway, Magnus, 60, has not
publicly spoken about what his plan would be for CBP. His backers in police and
policy circles say he is a strong supporter of his employees and is open to a
wide range of views. Claudia Jasso, chief development officer at the
Tucson-based nonprofit Amistades, said one of the first things Magnus did as
head of the city’s police department was to meet with the Latino community to
listen to their concerns. “He was humble and asked a lot of questions,” she
said. Gil Kerlikowske, who was CBP commissioner for three years under former
President Barack Obama, said there are people within the agency who disagree
with the politically outspoken union but who may not speak out. f Magnus is
confirmed to head CBP, Kerlikowske said, “empathy and compassion will be a
standard.” Many immigration advocates have been deeply critical of border
patrol and say it is time for reform. In 2019, the agency came under fire when
the nonprofit news site ProPublica revealed a private Facebook group in which
border patrol agents aired racist and misogynistic views. Then-acting CBP
Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said at the time that the posts did not reflect
the views of the agency’s employees. Border apprehensions have been rising
since Biden took office in January, reaching about 173,000 in April – the
highest monthly level in more than 20 years. The Biden administration initially
struggled to process the border crossers fast enough, resulting in thousands of
children being stuck in overcrowded border stations and forcing some agents to
take on caretaker roles instead of patrolling for drugs and smugglers.
While the administration made
changes that helped empty out the crowded stations, agents said they and their
colleagues remain frustrated that many families are being released into the
United States to pursue asylum cases, even as a Trump-era policy of quick
expulsions at the border during the pandemic is still in place. In at least one
part of the southern border, some agents have started calling Biden ‘Let ‘Em Go
Joe,’ according to a border patrol agent who asked to remain anonymous because
he was not authorized to speak to the media. Gil Maza, a former agent who
retired in March, runs a website selling an unofficial coin that refashions the
U.S. Border Patrol logo to read ‘U.S. Welcome Patrol.’ Maza said he had sold 78
of the coins in four days to current and former agents. “It sheds a little
humor on the situation,” he said of the coins. “And it’s something that helps
us, I guess, mentally and emotionally cope with the situation because
especially right now, the situation is pretty dire out there.” Some agents
echoed a grievance aired by Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott in an April 16
memo seen by Reuters that criticized the Biden administration’s directive to
use the terms ‘undocumented non-citizen’ or ‘migrant’ and stop using the phrase
‘illegal alien.’ “Over the years many outside forces on both extremes of the
political spectrum have intentionally, or unintentionally, politicized our
agency and our mission,” Scott wrote in the memo to acting CBP Commissioner
Troy Miller. The memo was first leaked to the right-wing news site Breitbart. The
Biden administration official defended the new terminology, saying that choice
of words mattered and that those in custody deserved to be treated with
dignity.
^ The US Border Patrol needs to
be changed from the top-down and Biden needs to take real action to both stop
illegal immigration as well as give Border Agents a clear and united voice in
what they are expected to do and how they are expected to do it. ^
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