Border Patrol Agent Speaks About Crisis: ‘Somewhere Down The Line People Just Accepted What’s Going On As Normal’
Public access to border patrol agents is typically controlled, and it's rare to hear about their personal experiences despite the national attention on the crisis. ProPublica, however, spoke to one who talks about what it's like working for the agency.
ProPublica:
A Border Patrol Agent Reveals What It’s Really Like To Guard Migrant Children
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. (Thompson, 7/16)
In other news on the immigration crisis —
The Washington Post:
CBP Forced A 3-Year-Old To Choose Which Parent Should Stay With Her In The U.S.
Inside a Customs and Border Patrol facility last week, a 3-year-old Honduran girl was reportedly asked to make an unfathomable choice. The girl’s parents, Tania and Joseph, had fled their country with their three children earlier this year, telling NPR they faced violent threats in Honduras from the infamous MS-13 gang. The family was soon moved to Júarez, Mexico, under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, which requires asylum seekers to wait outside the United States while their claims are adjudicated by an immigration judge. (Brice-Saddler, 7/16)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Pocan Says Trip To Migrant Facility Left More Questions Than Answers
More than half of the unaccompanied migrant children who were living in a Florida detention center are no longer there — but U.S. officials won't tell members of Congress where the children are now. Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan told reporters Tuesday that administrators of the 3,200-bed facility wouldn't answer his questions about the children's whereabouts during a visit Monday to the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children. (Andrea, 7/16)
