The Biden administration has transformed and imperiled the mission of the Border Patrol through migration policies that have led to a crisis at the southern border, current and former agents say.
Border Patrol agents broke protocol to claim in interviews with the Washington Examiner that their jobs have been remade since President Joe Biden took office a year ago. They say that they have been redirected from fulfilling a law enforcement and national security role to working as though they were in an Ellis Island-style welcome center.
Four of the agents agreed to speak anonymously about their concerns even though doing so risks termination. The rising frustration among agents has also manifested in leaked videos of the rank and file in angry confrontations with leadership in recent private meetings.
Still other agents have had enough and have quit the agency, anticipating that matters won't change in the next three years.
The century-old mission
Congress created the Border Patrol in 1924 for the purpose of securing land and sea borders
“While the Border Patrol has changed dramatically since its inception in 1924, its primary mission remains unchanged: to detect and prevent the illegal entry of individuals into the United States,” its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, states on its website.
The job has changed
Agents say their new responsibilities have little to do with the mission they signed up to perform. Instead, they're now focused on documenting and processing people who illegally cross the border, transporting them from the border to stations, and then releasing them by the hundreds of thousands.
Roughly 30% of the 2 million times Border Patrol agents encountered someone attempting to enter the country illegally from Mexico in 2021, they let them go into the United States, despite a still-in-effect public health protocol that requires every person be returned south to avoid filling border facilities with people or releasing them amid a global pandemic.
“The U.S. Border Patrol has become part of the alien smuggling organizations by aiding, abetting, and facilitating the illegal aliens' movements throughout the U.S. The very same thing we swore to protect against is what we’ve now become,” said one agent who works in a senior capacity in Texas.
One reason the Biden administration has released so many migrants into the interior of the country is that some Mexican states have refused to work with the U.S. to accept back people who had illegally crossed from Mexico. As a result, the administration opted not to detain hundreds of thousands of families in federal family residential centers but to release them into the country. In doing so, however, it signaled to massive criminal cartels in Mexico and Central America that they could sell their services and take advantage of the situation.
“Our job’s a joke,” said a second Border Patrol agent stationed in Texas, where the bulk of the migrants are crossing. “We’re not doing our jobs. We’re releasing people all day. We go from arresting people in the woods, pulling over fully loaded vehicles, to releasing people onto the streets of America. The smugglers look at us and laugh at us.” --->READ MORE HERE
The quadrupedal machines are being tested as autonomous sentries
The latest addition to the United States’ border force could be robot dogs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released new details this week of trials of quadrupedal robots on the southern border. The machines are being tested in a variety of surveillance-focused roles, and although the DHS has shared no timeline for full-term deployment, it says trials were “successful” and that work with the machines will continue.
“The southern border can be an inhospitable place for man and beast, and that is exactly why a machine may excel there,” said Brenda Long, a program manager for the DHS’ research and development arm, the Science & Technology directorate (S&T), in a blog post. “This S&T-led initiative focuses on Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicles, or what we call ‘AGSVs.’ Essentially, the AGSV program is all about … robot dogs.”
The quadrupedal machines are built by Ghost Robotics, rival to the better-known Boston Dynamics (makers of the Spot robot). Ghost Robotics’ most popular model, the Ghost Vision 60, stands 2.5 feet high (76cm), weighs 70lbs (32kg), and can travel over 7.5 miles in 3 hours on a single battery charge.
The machine can navigate autonomously or be controlled manually, and can be equipped with a number of payloads, including thermal and night vision cameras. In the past, Ghost Robotics has even shown off prototype models equipped with guns, though there is no suggestion the DHS is testing such payloads. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories:
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DHS to regulate controversial Border Patrol teams
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