From the “if you build it they will use it” files: Inside the Border Patrol
by digby
Politico Magazine is featuring a fascinating photo essay about the Border Patrol:
In 2007, artist David Taylor began documenting the quickly changing face of the U.S.-Mexico border at the height of the U.S. Border Patrol’s post-9/11 surge. He built relationships with smugglers, migrants and, in particular, the Border Patrol agents with whom he embedded off and on for four years, observing their workaday routines and shadowing them while they responded to calls. Over time, Taylor gained access to some of the most hidden corners of the agency’s various facilities along the border—in one instance, an agent told him he was the only person who had ever photographed a room stocked to the brim with M4 rifles. Throughout the project, Taylor saw a network of no-frills double-wide trailers staffed with career agents balloon into a state-of-the-art $3.5 billion behemoth, beset with allegations of rampant abuse and misconduct. The Border Patrol today, he says, “is not the Border Patrol I started with.”
You know what they say about money corrupting and all that jazz …
Here’s a bit of the story that accompanies it:
By 7 p.m., the Border Patrol, having questioned the first two victims, had realized there was a third victim, notifying the FBI that a kidnapping had occurred and that the girl was probably being held by a Border Patrol agent. The magnitude and horror of the crime were unusual, but the potential perpetrator wasn’t. The FBI in McAllen had gotten used to investigating assaults and misconduct among Border Patrol agents; it had become the field office’s top criminal priority.
It took only hours to narrow down a suspect: When investigators examined the truck Manzanares used on his shift, they found blood and duct tape.
By 12:39 a.m., FBI agents knocked on his red door, Apartment 1513, and shouted, “FBI—federal agents.” At first, there was no response. Then, the agents heard a single gunshot as Manzanares took his own life. When a SWAT team broke down the door, they found the teen inside, still naked and bound, but alive.
Now it was definitely time to tell the new commissioner.
Kerlikowske had already known that the Border Patrol was troubled, of course: It had taken 1,870 days into the Obama administration before he even became the first Senate-confirmed commissioner of the Obama era, and he was well aware he didn’t have much time to right an agency that was beset by corruption problems and excessive force complaints, the unfortunate legacies of a massive hiring surge that had doubled the force’s size in just a few years after 9/11. That lying and obfuscation had often accompanied the scandals was no real surprise either.
Read the whole thing to see an agency awash in money and getting more corrupt and criminal by the day. And then ponder this story from last year:
Five Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who frequently rail against government spending voted to increase federal appropriations on border security by an undetermined billions of dollars during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s mark-up of the bipartisan senate immigration bill on Thursday, agreeing to deploy twice as many border agents to the South Western border than “will be on the ground in Afghanistan at the start of 2014.” The measure failed in a vote of 5 to 13.
The debate came during consideration of an amendment offered by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to triple the number of border patrol agents on the border and quadruple the technological infrastructure. The measure, which would have delayed the path to legalization for the nations 11.1 million by almost 10 years, could have required as much as $60 billion in additional government spending.
Ted Cruz is the very essence of the Republican Party. The federal government has a blank check for police and military — and nothing else. It must focus its power on foreigners and people of color, of course. Nice white people who toe the line must be “free.” When you strip away all the Randian bullshit and paeans to freedom and liberty this is what they want.
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