'People Actively Hate Us': Inside the Border Patrol's Morale Crisis

[JonLP24]

Overwhelmed by desperate migrants and criticized for mistreating the people in their care, many agents have grown defensive, insular and bitter.

By Manny Fernandez, Miriam Jordan, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Caitlin DickersonPhotographs by Kendrick Brinson
Sept. 15, 2019
Updated 7:08 a.m. ET

One Border Patrol agent in Tucson said he had been called a “sellout” and a “kid killer.” In El Paso, an agent said he and his colleagues in uniform had avoided eating lunch together except at certain “BP friendly” restaurants because “there’s always the possibility of them spitting in your food.” An agent in Arizona quit last year out of frustration. “Caging people for a nonviolent activity,” he said, “started to eat away at me.”

For decades, the Border Patrol was a largely invisible security force. Along the southwestern border, its work was dusty and lonely. Between adrenaline-fueled chases, the shells of sunflower seeds piled up outside the windows of their idling pickup trucks. Agents called their slow-motion specialty “laying in” — hiding in the desert and brush for hours, to wait and watch, and watch and wait.

Two years ago, when President Trump entered the White House with a pledge to close the door on illegal immigration, all that changed. The nearly 20,000 agents of the Border Patrol became the leading edge of one of the most aggressive immigration crackdowns ever imposed in the United States.

No longer were they a quasi-military organization tasked primarily with intercepting drug runners and chasing smugglers. Their new focus was to block and detain hundreds of thousands of migrant families fleeing violence and extreme poverty — herding people into tents and cages, seizing children and sending their parents to jail, trying to spot those too sick to survive in the densely packed processing facilities along the border.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/us/border-patrol-culture.html

[uponit7771]

1. When you actively kidnap helpless peoples kids then what are people supposed to think about you!?!?

[DFW]

2. I have never had an issue with them, but my wife has

Once at the Canadian border with Vermont, stopped by some idiot who couldn't find her entry stamp, and thought she had overstayed her visa-free time (she talked her way out of that one). Twice at the Atlanta airport.

The first time in Atlanta was when she wanted to enter the USA and then leave after having spent a total of 89 days out of 180 (90 are allowed) in the country. She was detained for an hour until a supervisor called her, looked at her passport and plane ticket, and said she was free to go.

The second time, the immigration officer said that her fingerprints didn't match. This was weird, since she hadn't switched fingers since the last time she had visited the USA. All insisting that she was using the same fingers she had always used fell on deaf ears. Detained again, an hour's wait, again the supervisor, who rolled his eyes and released her immediately.

Maybe it's my wife's suspicious ethnic make-up that is causing all these red flags. After all, what would any blonde, blue-eyed German citizen in their right mind be doing visiting the American South of her own free will?

[KentuckyWoman]

13. Atlanta customs is gawd awful. Period.

I'm an old lady who speaks fluent southern and they've treated me poorly also. Maybe it was "Why would any old lady from Kentucky go to Germany?"

[struggle4progress]

31. "South American countries like Germany are all sending us their refugees!"

[Girard442]

3. I suppose some of the Gestapo and SS might have experienced the same discomfort.

Not enough, obviously.

[hlthe2b]

6. That was my thought. I'm sorry their leadership has made it necessary to sell their soul or quit,

but honestly, there is a right and wrong. Sometimes it is not even a question.

If you assist those who commit such evil towards innocents, do you really think you will (should) come through unscathed?

[Lonestarblue]

14. The Border Patrol is made up of all kinds of people.

Some of them are decent human beings whom care about what they’re being forced to do. Working for the government is a good job in these areas, and they have families to feed. I do have some empathy for them because finding another job in their areas and with their skills may not be so easy.

Unfortunately, the Border Patrol also has individuals who enjoy hurting others. Those are the dregs of humanity that Trump and his soulless sycophant Miller favor. They’re often the ones we hear about in private and public prisons beating the inmates and raping women for their own entertainment. I’m not sure what jobs people like that should hold, but it certainly isn’t working with poor migrants who are just desperate for some bit of security.

[hlthe2b]

15. I don't deny any of that. Nor does it dispute anything I did say.

As someone who had to make the difficult choice of giving up a good job I loved for ethical reasons, I fully understand the implications. I've experienced them. I did what I knew was right. I don't defend those who do not. That doesn't mean I don't sympathize with them for the sacrifice.

[lame54]

23. Do these 2 types not know each other?

[Jirel]

4. Keep up the good work, folks.

Poor BP are whining, but somehow most of them aren’t quitting. Yet. Keep up the good work, y’all, until they all have to find honest work instead.

[vlyons]

5. They can always quit the job

Sorry, but when your job is hurting people, expect to get criticism.

[hatrack]

7. Huh, imagine that . . .

When people are desperate enough to seek asylum and you treat them like shit, kidnap their children and put them in concentration camps because Orange Julius Caesar told you to (and you went along), you might get pushback.

Shocking.

Pardon me while I go weep hot, bitter tears for members of the Border Patrol whose fee-fees got hurt.

Not.

[RKP5637]

8. "I was just doing my job!" Hmmmm ... where did we here that one before! n/t

[RussellCattle]

19. Or the classic "I was just following orders" (usually done with a German accent - "I vas shust")

[B Stieg]

28. See "Eichmann in Jerusalem"

for "the banality of evil." (by Hannah Arendt)

[NNadir]

9. There is a time when "only following orders" is no excuse. This...

...was established at the Nuremberg trials.

I would quit my job if the order was to separate small children from their parents and lock the children in cages with almost no support, in filth and squalor.

These children, at least those who survive, will be adults some day; and they will be filled with hatred that future generations will need to face.

[KentuckyWoman]

10. Boo fucking hoo

“Caging people for a nonviolent activity ... started to eat away at me.” That should have happened the second you were informed it was the new SOP.

Whatever else the rest of the country may think of you, the locals KNOW the shit you guys are up to. That's not reporting, that's seeing it first hand. So if the locals want to spit in your food, then you aren't serving your country. You are serving yourself at your country's expense.

Go work someplace else. Yeah, the local police dept might pay less, but you have a chance to be a human being instead of an ass.

[Historic NY]

11. Well the biggest part of the problem is they are not hiring the best...

because not many people in LE want the job. The Border Patrol has gone from requiring a college degree or appropriate hours to not making it an absolute requirement.


A college degree is not a set requirement for entering into a career as a border patrol agent, although having an education in a field related to the position, such as criminal justice, is often a benefit.

[AllyCat]

12. Then quit.

Quit your job. Quit enabling racists. Quit being racist. Quit hurting people.

Take time to heal and HELP is on the moral side of this issue.

[usaf-vet]

16. Does the Border Patrol have anything comparable to the UCMJ?

UCMJ --- The Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Provides guidance for disobeying unlawful orders.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809[890].ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the "lawful command of his superior officer," 891.ART.91 (2), the "lawful order of a warrant officer", 892.ART.92 (1) the "lawful general order", 892.ART.92 (2) "lawful order". In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. Snowflakes. Ask, say, black TG what forms of hate they get for being themselves. BP can quit anytime

[NickB79]

18. You wanna play soldier, you get to deal with the PTSD

What, you thought you could have it both ways?

[Fiendish Thingy]

20. Unless you're going to be a whistleblower, time to find a new line of work

I believe they lowered the standards for CBP officers when Trump took office, below the typical standards for other LEO's, as they couldn't fill the positions otherwise.

These folks aren't the cream of the crop, and we are reaping what Trump has sown.

[Salviati]

21. Morale Crisis or Moral Crisis?

Perhaps if they paid more attention to the latter, the former would take care of itself.

[defacto7]

22. Sounds like a pretty reasonable cause and effect to me.

[KG]

24. t & p

can't even be bothered type it out.

[Aristus]

25. Oh, poor widdle babies...

Let's see; they have uniforms, badges, guns, and probably 300 biscuits-and-gravy pounds apiece, attack dogs, and squalid concentrations camps. And they're terrorizing frightened, defenseless people.

But the border patrol guys are the victims?...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

26. Maybe they can try to stop being hateful.

[RVN VET71]

27. Interesting how many of these troopers still hold to the old saw:

"It can't happen here," even while they are the ones demonstrating how easily it can and does happen here!

The slope downward begins very gradually then accelerates rapidly. It begins with chasing drug dealers and mules, then it moves to chasing migrants, then to arresting and imprisoning migrants and asylum seekers, then kidnapping children and making them drink out of toilets. If Miller has his way, it will only get even more vile and inhumane -- and Miller WILL have his way.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

29. I have little sympathy for anybody carrying out President Miller's orders

And, just to be clear that, while I'm not saying that ICE was a great thing to begin with, they've clearly gone off the rails under Trump and are in charge of implementing some truly awful policies under Trump and should resign in protest if they don't want to be feared, disliked, etc.

[MrsCoffee]

30. Most people are not fans of monsters who lock kids in cages and carry out orders from racists.

Duh.

You fucking idiots.

[gibraltar72]

32. Add me to the list.