A large number of Border Patrol agents are growing increasingly frustrated as they are being pulled from their duties of securing the border and assigned to process and transport illegals, a report said.
The flood of illegals allowed into the U.S. via Team Biden's open border policy "is taking a significant toll because it has kept agents from carrying out their national security mission. Agents say they are physically drained and struggling to see beyond the crisis," Washington Examiner Homeland Security Reporter Anna Giaritelli noted on Aug. 22.
“Morale is in the toilet,” said Jon Anfinsen, president of the National Border Patrol Council's Del Rio, Texas chapter.
"Morale is low because agents aren't allowed to do their job — if our job is to be out patrolling the border in between the ports of entry and actively searching for people who have crossed illegally, but we're not allowed to go do that job, it basically creates this defeated feeling in everyone."
The 245-mile stretch that makes up the Del Rio sector is currently patrolled by just 12 agents, Giaritelli's report noted. That is the lowest-ever number of agents on duty in the sector.
“Agents are primarily indoors, processing, and we're dealing with the people who are flagging us down — the ones who are walking up to us and turning themselves in," said Anfinsen. "Meanwhile, the immigrants who don't want anything to do with us, they're running away, although sometimes they're walking because they have no need to run because we're not there.”
The report quoted an agent who works for CBP’s Air and Marine Operations arm in Texas as saying it is easy to spot groups crossing the Rio Grande River, but “there are no agents available” to take them into custody and no agents are in the field counting the number of people who get away.
The report added: "On one day recently, the McAllen Border Patrol Station in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas sent just one emergency medical technician and K-9 into the field, keeping all other agents indoors processing, transporting migrants, or carrying out other non-enforcement tasks."
An agent assigned to the horse patrol unit in Texas said it was hard to remember the last time the unit was allowed to patrol on horseback because the team has been pulled aside to transport and process migrants.
“Everyone shows up to work sort of downtrodden, almost dead inside, for lack of a better term,” Anfinsen added. “They're not allowed to [do] the job, and they know that people are getting away every single day, every hour.”
An border agent based in Arizona said they are “hit 24/7.”
“The mission is no longer Deter, Detect, Detain. It is wait until they have all crossed, Uber them to the station and process,” the agent wrote in a message.
“Morale is below the Mason/Dixon line. We need more agents on the line (not at hospital or processing). We need more agents working INTEL to nail the son’s behind these groups," the agent added, referring to the cartels that smuggle migrants.
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