Monday, April 25, 2022

Mexican Border Agents Quitting Over Influx of ‘more violent’ Migrants

NY Post photo composite
Border agents in Mexico are fed up to the point of leaving their jobs — and say that, if the US lifts Title 42, things will only get worse.
“Work has doubled and even tripled for us. Some weeks we have no days off. We pull in double shifts for the same pay and are sent from one end of the country to the other with less money for our expenses that we must pay up front,” said an officer, Jorge, who spoke with The Post on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal.
No statistics are available on how many officers have quit Mexican immigration forces. But Jorge said that, on one team alone, at least half of the 30 officers have quit over the last two years.
“It’s a nationwide phenomenon,” he said.
Jorge is an officer with the National Migration Institute (Instituto Nacional de Migración), Mexico’s version of the US Border Patrol, which has become an ever-increasing first response force against desperate undocumented migrants from all over the world — Central and South America, but also some Caribbean countries and even Africa, Europe and Russia — who dream of reaching American cities.
AFP via Getty Images
Sources said that officers, already besieged by a big workload and overtaxed by pulling double shifts, are routinely sent from their posts in northern border towns to the most southern parts of Mexico, to aid understaffed and weary guards there with the influx of immigrants coming in — mostly via Guatemala.
And there’s nothing easy about it. Recently, officers have been attacked and left injured in bloody brawls with angry mobs of migrants.
It’s enough to make them want to give up.
“My family suffers. I barely see my kids,” said Jorge, who is primarily based at the border with California. “It’s a desperate situation and there seems no way out.”
Two other former immigration officers contacted by The Post second Jorge’s allegations, adding that officers are increasingly put in dangerous situations with violent migrants.
Juan, a former officer who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said the high risk and low pay were just not worth it for him.
“I got a job as a truck driver,” told The Post. “I am away from home in this job. But it is not that dangerous.”
Unlike the US Border Patrol, Mexican immigration officers do not carry firearms. On at least one occasion, Jorge said, he and others were attacked by migrants armed with rocks; in another instance, human traffickers in the southern state of Oaxaca fired upon their patrol car.
Read the rest of the story HERE

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