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

[mfcorey1]

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.

At that moment, the agent, a father of a 2-year-old, realized that something in him had shifted during his weeks in the McAllen center. “I don’t know why she’s shouting,” he remembered thinking. “No one on the other end of the line cares. If they did, this wouldn’t be happening.”

As he turned away to return to his duties, the agent recalled feeling sorry for the lawyer. “I wanted to tell her the rest of us have given up.”

It’s rare to hear from Border Patrol agents, especially since the Trump administration has put them at the front lines of its sweeping immigration crackdown. Public access to them is typically controlled and choreographed. When approached off duty, agents say they risk their jobs if they speak about their work without permission. As a result, much about the country’s largest federal law enforcement agency — with some 20,000 agents policing the borders and ports — remains shrouded in secrecy, even from congressional oversight, making it nearly impossible to hold it accountable.

Disturbing glimpses of some agents have recently begun to fill the void, including some that were published recently after ProPublica obtained screenshots from a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents that showed several agents and at least one supervisor had posted crude, racist and misogynistic comments about immigrants and Democratic members of Congress. The posts raised questions about whether the deplorable detention conditions on the border were out of the control of Customs and Border Protection, as the agency had asserted, or a reflection of its culture.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-border-patrol-agent-reveals-what-its-really-like-to-guard-migrant-children/ar-AAEpdXT?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

[matt819]

1. Sorry guy. . .

Even after WWII they went after the concentration camp guards. If there is any justice in this country, they will do the same here. From the lowliest BP agent to the president. You may be wondering wtf has happened to you. Doesn't matter. You're now a concentration camp guard abusing men, women, and children. And unless you speak out - and I mean in Congress - you are no better than your fellow guards.

[Javaman]

2. More than a few concentration camp guards during WWII...

Ate bullets. I bet a few of the border guards eventually do the same

[uponit7771]

3. Say man, you can always go find something else and keep your soul

[lpbk2713]

6. I would think something like this would be a life changing event.

Even if their conscience made them move on to something
else they could never erase what they experienced.

[klook]

4. Hope this guy contacts his nearest Democratic Congressional rep

and offers to testify in an open hearing. End the complicity with evil. Expose this rot. Bring it down.

[BigmanPigman]

5. They should have tried harder to get attention.

They could have asked for anonymity, could have had friends call for them, call the TV stations, etc.

[llmart]

7. If it truly did devastate him, he'd quit his job and go public with the story.

No paycheck is worth looking the other way when children are harmed.