The news about the funding cuts affecting Border Patrol agents from California to Texas has been consistently getting worse throughout the years, but how it affects the families of agents is rarely discussed. Their families not only struggle with the loss of income but with the pressures on their loved ones who serve along the border; facing physical dangers and consistently changing guidelines and expectations.
In response to a damaging article in the San Diego Reader about the current status of “forward operating bases” along the Mexico/Arizona border, the conversation has become more focused. Those bases; run down and practically inoperable, stand as a reminder of the lack of regard Congress and the Obama administration has for the men and woman who serve on the frontline of the homeland.
That treatment of our agents was a topic this week on the James T. Harris radio show, in Tucson, Arizona. A wife of a Border Patrol agent, by the name of Mariah, called in and shared the truth of Border patrol families’ lives. She claimed that her husband’s salary has dropped more than $23,000 in the past six years alone. She reported her husband’s job is nearly impossible to do anymore because of the constantly changing guidelines.
“It is getting harder and harder for them out there. They cannot even enforce the law out there,” Mariah explained during her call. “A lot of agents have had to go elsewhere because they said why were they there if they can’t even do what we are supposed to do?…They are working 14 to 16 hours a day and they are not even getting paid for 10. (My husband) loves his job but it has gotten harder and harder every year. His pay has gotten cut but the work has increased. Just last night they had 7 groups of people crossing and with not enough agents they’ve been told to just get the guns or whatever these people are carrying and the drugs and let them go because unless they are gang members or whatever it is up to them to get an arrest because they can’t according to the memos that they get every night.”
Just this week, Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council criticized Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil R. Kerlikowske for his “see-something-say-nothing approach” because it “weakens border security.” Kerlikowske presented testimony before the House Appropriations Committee that the National Border Patrol Council claims “was riddled with half-truths and included at least one outright lie.”
Judd echoed Mariah’s claims, “Border Patrol agents do not turn every individual we arrest over to ICE. Under the Prosecutorial Discretion guidelines, we walk a great many illegal aliens out our front door without them even being interviewed by ICE. In these cases we don’t even refer these individuals via a notice to appear to see a judge, the lawful proceeding that allows a person to show cause for why they should be allowed to remain. We simply let them go and pretend they were never in our custody.”
Judd said that when Kerlikowske was “faced with tough questioning at the hearing about low morale in his agency,” the commissioner implied that agents didn’t like it they should quit. For the agents and their families it is not that simple. They know the current risk our open border poses, and unlike Kerlikowske they can handle the pressure.
They shouldn’t have to.