Uncle Gruppenführer wants YOU
Author and journalist Tom Zoellner caught my attention with a long Facebook post on his encounters with U.S. Border Patrol agents. It’s worth your time. (I’ve added in the links Zoellner included in his post’s comments and his background links on the Border Patrol here and here):
I got to know a number of U.S. Border Patrol agents after the 2016 election and drank beer with them in various Tucson bars. While these conversations were friendly, they left me troubled. The depth of extreme right-wing and jingoistic convictions of most of them was genuinely surprising to me, as I had expected the measured norms of federal law enforcement to be their public face.
Not these guys. A lot of them had joined in the patriotic fervor after 9/11, thinking they would be going after America’s enemies. They took this vengeful attitude to the generally helpless Central American and Mexican laborers they sought to apprehend. I was also surprised by the overt cruelty of some agents that I met, and the general lack of professionalism.
I had to block one of them on this platform (a rare thing for me) because he told me with some amount of seriousness that I should hang for treason because I supported Kamala Harris for president, and that this would be the fate of other Democrats who were “in on it,” whatever “it” is supposed to mean.
Reminder: this is a federal agent currently serving, advocating the murder of U.S. citizens because of their mainstream political belief.
Studies of criminality among Customs and Border Patrol officers found that protections against corruption are exceptionally weak, and that prosecutions for unjust shootings are rare.
From the Arizona Daily Star last week: “Willcox border agent Bart Conrad Yager, 39, was also charged with six counts of “pandering,” or encouraging someone to engage in prostitution; one count of attempted child sex trafficking; and two counts of fraud, between July 2023 and March 2024 in Cochise County…The investigation found Yager often went home early, at times solicited sex acts for money while on duty, and got reimbursed with government funds for Pima County hotels where the sex acts took place, Cooper wrote. Between 2021 and 2024, Yager paid $42,400 in 231 transactions with women.”
He had been investigated for allegedly raping a woman in 2014. The Tucson police told the Border Patrol about this. Nothing was done. Yager kept working.
Thugs and bullies drunk on their new power
If like me you have wondered if ICE is finding its masked agents on Cragslist and taking them unvetted, and if it seems that they must be getting their training in law enforcement over Zoom or over the weekend, read on:
Hiring standards are going to get even lower. The mega-agency known as ICE now has $45 billion to spend on staff and facilities, plus a mandate to do 3,000 deportations a day, almost all of them the same kind of defenseless people from the countryside who came here to do terrible jobs for low pay. The only type of person who would be drawn to such work either has a cruel streak, or no interest in real law enforcement.
Already packed with the dregs, the rejects from other agencies, I believe ICE is going to be made up of even more thugs and bullies drunk on their new power, with the same lack of oversight that let monsters like Yager run rampant. Their overt loyalty to Trump, which is now the chief or only qualifying principle at the top of most cabinet agencies, will likely be the nudge-nudge criteria for promotion and advancement. And it may may asking too much of this Justice Department or FBI to make a serious attempt to get to the bottom of any atrocities they may commit while masked up and stuffing people into unmarked white vans without identifying themselves.
Those with backgrounds in the Proud Boys or other white identitarian groups will surely be among the applicants. Large parts of our federal police apparatus will begin to resemble the “buffs” and racist deputy gangs that left a lasting stain on the LAPD and L.A. Sheriff’s Department.
With a record of skirting 4th Amendment protections in pursuit of their mission, ICE has the potential to morph into the president’s internal army against domestic enemies.
It already has. They’re just not wearing brown shirts. And they’re starting with the easiest prey.
All Americans of good conscience should protest the expansion of this troubled agency, and be extremely suspicious of anything they say. Because they will lie about you if you get in their way.
From The Guardian yesterday: “US immigration officers made false and misleading statements in their reports about several Los Angeles protesters they arrested during the massive demonstrations that rocked the city in June, according to federal law enforcement files obtained by the Guardian. The officers’ testimony was cited in at least five cases filed by the US Department of Justice amid the unrest. The justice department has charged at least 26 people with ‘assaulting’ and ‘impeding’ federal officers and other crimes during the protests over immigration raids. Prosecutors, however, have since been forced to dismiss at least eight of those felonies, many of them which relied on officers’ inaccurate reports, court records show.”
We covered the origin of those supposed “assaults” back in June. (Emphasis below is mine.)
You may think me naive for being surprised by these personal interactions described above, and maybe I was. But I went into it with a belief, based on a few years of covering police as a journalist in the 1990s, that federal law enforcement had reasonable hiring standards for agents and functioning internal affairs departments. I also knew of many compassionate acts by Border Patrol agents during the crossing waves in the early 2000s. Times seem to have changed for the much-worse.
A qualifier or two. I’m not anti-cop. In fact, I’m inclined to like and trust them. Some of the extreme rhetoric around the 2020 protests left me cold. I had several police officers in my family who were good and honest public servants. I interacted professionally with hundreds of them. It is a tough job that, which done well, is deserving of our respect. But what’s happening with ICE is not deserving of our respect.
It has also been pointed out to me that Yager finally got arrested because of an internal Border Patrol investigation. But to me, this is no vindication of the agency. His purported crimes were so blatant and went on for so long (more than a decade) that it seems a grim commentary on just how bad the standards are over there.
You do not need an undergraduate degree. Nor be able to read, comprehend, and uphold the U.S. Constitution. Proud Boys and Jan. 6 insurrectionists welcome.
(h/t RP)
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