With the presidential campaign underway, candidates are once again trying to answer the question of how to manage the southern border. For the past 20 years a big part of the answer has been Border Patrol. At the turn of the century, about 8,500 agents patrolled the border. Now there are more than twice that many.
A new article in Mother Jones magazine finds that with a push for recruitment, hiring standards have fluctuated and misconduct has risen, including in New Mexico.
Author Erin Siegal McIntyre spoke to KUNM about her reporting, beginning with an incident in New Mexico.
ERIN SIEGAL MCINTYRE: So in this magazine story, I detail an account of a reported rape that happened in September 2019 at the Border Patrol Academy, which is in Artesia, New Mexico. And I was trying to get a better handle on scale, on the amount of reported misconduct, and so I had filed a number of different public information requests.
One of those was to the Artesia Police Department, and I asked them for copies of all records related to police being dispatched to the academy. And that's how I found out about this reported rape. A supervisor at the academy, a border patrol agent had called it in one night.
KUNM: Did you hear rumors or anecdotes that suggested this might be something worth looking into?
SIEGAL MCINTYRE: Yes, I've spoken to a number of survivors of sexual assault who have been either trainees or border patrol agents themselves. But again, it's really hard to figure out, what is the scale of this problem, how is misconduct handled?
KUNM: What did your reporting on Border Patrol, or I guess the parent agency Customs and Border Protection, what did it turn up about how common this kind of misconduct is?
SIEGAL MCINTYRE: So I used one data set I obtained from the border patrol, from CBP, and that is a document that had never been released before. It details 186 different allegations around sexual misconduct over the past 20 years. And when we look at that number, 186, you know, it's not a huge number, given the scope of time.
At the same time, when we look at that data set, which is supposed to be comprehensive, right, there are some really glaring omissions. There are some very high profile cases in which agents committed pretty heinous crimes, were tried, found guilty and sentenced that don't show up there. So it's clear you can't trust the government's numbers, and that's why the press is really important when it comes to keeping the Border Patrol accountable.
KUNM: You detail in your story a bit about how the agency has changed since 9/11. How has that affected who's recruited and how they act?
SIEGAL MCINTYRE: So since 2003, when the Department of Homeland Security was created after 9/11, the mandate given by President Bush at the time was to expand, and the agency did just that to the best they could. That involved lowering hiring standards. And you know, the consequences of that played out over the next decade. We saw an increase in corruption. We saw an increase in agents being caught engaging in criminal behavior like drug smuggling, being involved in cartel activities, a whole host of bad behaviors that are not what one would expect of a federal law enforcement officer.
KUNM: What does CBP say when you ask about all this?
SIEGAL MCINTYRE: When you ask CBP, you'll say, hey, we take every allegation of misconduct very seriously and we fully investigate it. But you know, in regards to this one case that I write about, there's no evidence that anything was fully investigated. And when I went to CBP to ask them to answer a bunch of questions. That's when they said, Oh, yeah, wait, we're actually still investigating this case. You know, this case happened five years ago, and so for them to say, "Yeah, we're actively investigating," frankly, I'm skeptical.
KUNM: We're once again hearing presidential candidates talking about the border. Do you think any significant change in the way Border Patrol works is likely if either candidate is elected?
SIEGAL MCINTYRE: You know, that's a really good question. And I've spoken to more than one former commissioner at CBP. I've talked to various Border Patrol agents who rose to the ranks, even holding the positions of chief of the entire patrol, right? And you know, one of the former commissioners once said to me, here's the thing about the Border Patrol, they're too big and too unaccountable for anything to change, and nobody has the political capital to make the changes needed to actually help the agency improve around misconduct and corruption. So I hope things change, but I'm not optimistic.
