On the Controversial Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group

As is sometimes the case when I take a break from posts on the week of the 4^th of July, some big news broke.

This time, one big piece of news that broke was on the topic of illegal immigration. Namely, the news site ProPublica broke a story about a secret U.S. Border Patrol Facebook group, titled “I’m 10-15”,[1] which joked about migrant deaths and made blatantly sexist and racist comments about members of Congress visiting a troubled Border Patrol facility.[2]

The revelations brought forth by ProPublica, important as they were, would’ve been disturbing enough if this consisted of a few dozen members or a few hundred. However, this group, which includes both current and retired U.S. Border Patrol officials, is a group of about 9,500 people. To put this in perspective, there were about 19,400 Border Patrol agents as of 2017,[3] so the number of people in the group is roughly half the number of total Border Patrol agents.

What this means is that this is not just a few bad apples causing trouble. The entire culture with the United States Border Patrol is rotten, from top to bottom.

So when I hear politicians or people in general say that we should respond to this by “firing those involved with this,” it just comes across as a shallow response. It comes across as a shallow response because it then sounds like everything will get better when we just “get rid of the bad apples.” Such a response, while well-intended, seems to be blind to the injustice that this is about more than bad people—it’s about an entire governmental agency that is broken at many levels. Yes, there is the brokenness of the hate exhibited by the current and former agency employees on the Facebook group. But there is also the brokenness of the inhumane practices that exist in the Border Patrol facilities, the brokenness of the leadership that allows these practices, and the brokenness of the hiring practices that led to such prejudiced people being on the United States Border Patrol in the first place, to name a few. The problems at the Border Patrol will need a fix much deeper than simply firing some people.

There instead needs to be a complete change in the culture of the Border Patrol, from top to bottom. Such an overhaul is needed because otherwise, all one would do by firing people is hiring new agents who would in turn find themselves entrenched in a broken agency. Yes, the people on the Border Patrol need to show more sensitivity and less prejudice, but the Border Patrol itself, regardless of the people within it, also needs significant changes.

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[1] Apparently, “10-15” is Border Patrol code for “aliens in custody.”

[2] You can find the story through this link, but read at your own risk. I found what was talked about here to be extremely disturbing and upsetting: https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-agents-joke-about-migrant-deaths-post-sexist-memes#

[3] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/feb/01/adam-smith/has-number-border-patrol-agents-quadrupled-2005/