Meet the Boy Scouts of the Border Patrol
February 3, 2020, Issue
Meet the Boy Scouts of the Border Patrol
The Border Patrol Explorers program offers training and mentorship—with a side of Trumpian ideology.
By Morley Musick
Today 6:00 am
The US Border Patrol’s community outreach efforts can verge on the macabre. For instance, agents at the Ajo station in Arizona, who patrol the Sonoran Desert for undocumented migrants, ran a Teddy Bear Patrol in 2004, passing out stuffed animals to small children. They did this while arresting immigrants trying to join their children after crossing the border.
Border Patrol Explorers, the agency’s program for 14-to-20-year-olds, offers an equally stark double standard: Young people, many of them first-generation Mexican Americans or the US-born children of undocumented immigrants, learn survival skills, first aid, and participate in training exercises in which they play Border Patrol agents or the people they target. Some will inadvertently retrace the path their undocumented parents took across the Sonoran Desert, pretending to get arrested or make arrests.
Operating in southern border communities throughout Arizona, California, and Texas as well as the northern parts of Maine, Michigan, and Washington, the Border Patrol Explorers program offers a taste of law enforcement work to young people interested in a career in security, policing, or the military. Run in conjunction with Learning for Life, an affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America, Border Patrol Explorers promises to teach young people life skills by preparing them, among other things, to arrest drug runners and undocumented immigrants. Various levels of law enforcement, from local sheriffs to the military, run their own Explorer programs.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/scouts-border-immigration-trump/
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