Tag: Trump border patrol

Longtime Leaders Of Border Patrol Are Leaving Troubled Agency In Crisis

On a Saturday evening in late September, Deputy Chief Scott Luck gathered with family and friends in the crystal-chandeliered ballroom of the Trump National Golf Club, nestled along the shores of the Potomac River in Virginia, to celebrate his retirement after 33 years in the U.S. Border Patrol.

The party was adorned with a who’s who in Border Patrol leadership, past and present. There was the unmistakable figure of Luck’s boss, Chief Carla Provost, tall and broad with her trademark fringe of brown bangs, and her longtime friend Andrea Zortman, who helps oversee foreign operations for the agency. A full contingent of retired former chiefs-turned-consultants were on hand, too, including David Aguilar, 64, who’d headed the Border Patrol as well as its parent, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Michael Fisher, 55, who’d succeeded Aguilar as Border Patrol chief. Rowdy Adams, 59, another retired senior-level CBP official, also attended the celebration.

The guests had kicked in $75 apiece to cover food and a gift for the send-off, but hovering over the party was a mix of weariness and defiance: It wasn’t just the end of Luck’s career, it was the end of an era at the agency — their era. And the widespread critiques currently pummeling the embattled patrol and its more than 19,600 agents would be, implicitly, their legacy. Continue reading.

Border Patrol Agent Who Hit Migrant With Truck Pleads Guilty

New York Times logoMatthew Bowen, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, had sent a text message referring to immigrants as “subhuman” and “murdering savages,” according to court documents.

A Border Patrol agent who intentionally hit a Guatemalan migrant with his truck in Arizona in 2017 — and who had referred to immigrants in a text message as “subhuman” and “mindless murdering savages” — has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, according to a document filed in federal court on Monday.

The agent, Matthew Bowen, who was stationed in Nogales, will face up to one year in prison and could be fined $100,000 when he is sentenced on Oct. 15 for deprivation of rights under color of law, according to the plea agreement.

Mr. Bowen also said in the plea agreement that he would resign from the Border Patrol. He was suspended in June 2018, according to The Arizona Daily Star.

View the complete August 12 article by Mihir Zaveri and Mariel Padilla on The New York Times website here.

A Border Patrol Agent Reveals What It’s Really Like to Guard Migrant Children

With the agency under fire for holding children in deplorable conditions and over racist and misogynistic Facebook posts, one agent speaks about what it’s like to do his job. “Somewhere down the line people just accepted what’s going on as normal.”

The Border Patrol agent, a veteran with 13 years on the job, had been assigned to the agency’s detention center in McAllen, Texas, for close to a month when the team of court-appointed lawyers and doctors showed up one day at the end of June.

Taking in the squalor, the stench of unwashed bodies, and the poor health and vacant eyes of the hundreds of children held there, the group members appeared stunned.

Then, their outrage rolled through the facility like a thunderstorm. One lawyer emerged from a conference room clutching her cellphone to her ear, her voice trembling with urgency and frustration. “There’s a crisis down here,” the agent recalled her shouting.

View the complete July 16 article by Ginger Thompson on the ProPublica website here.

Border Patrol Kept Families Separated To Avoid ‘Paperwork’

Unsettling details of Trump’s family separation policy were laid out in a new investigative report released by congressional staff for Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), acknowledging that “child separations were more harmful, traumatic, and chaotic than previously known.”

The investigation found that the youngest known child to be ripped away from his parents was a four-month-old Romanian boy.

In another instance, an eight-month-old baby was taken from her father in May 2018. At the time of his father’s release from custody, “the baby had spent nearly half of his life without his parents, in the custody of the Trump Administration,” according to the report. “It is unclear whether the child and father have been reunited.”

View the complete July 13 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

Border Patrol Agents Circulate ‘Challenge Coin’ Mocking Care for Migrant Kids

An unofficial commemorative coin has been circulating among Border Patrol agents at the U.S./Mexico border, mocking the task of caring for migrant children and other duties that have fallen to agents as families cross into the U.S.

On the front, the coin declares “KEEP THE CARAVANS COMING” under an image of a massive parade of people carrying a Honduran flag — a caricature of the “caravan” from last fall, which started in Honduras and attracted thousands of people as it moved north. (While the caravan included many women and children, the only visible figures on the coin appear to be adult men.)

The coin’s reverse side features the Border Patrol logo and three illustrations: a Border Patrol agent bottle-feeding an infant; an agent fingerprinting a teen boy wearing a backwards baseball cap; and a U.S. Border Patrol van. The text along the edge reads “FEEDING ** PROCESSING ** HOSPITAL ** TRANSPORT.”

View the complete July 13 article by Dara Lind on the National Memo here.