border patrol agents

Almost immediately after Joe Biden took the oath of office for the Presidency, he began to make sweeping changes to a number of Trump-era policies. He shut down work on the Keystone XL pipeline, and he made major changes to the way migrant encounters at the Southern U.S. border are handled.

These changes included not enforcing the so-called public charge rule which denies green cards to immigrants who might sign up for public benefits (including Medicaid), encouraging refugee admissions to the country, and reversing the Remain in Mexico policy. He also lifted restrictions created during the early days of the pandemic which reduced the number of visas provided to immigrants.

Critics say that these major changes have impacted the border patrol in major ways, and none of them positive. Pew Research released data regarding the number of arrests on the border, which were over one million for fiscal year 2021. Former director of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Tom Homan is an outspoken critic of the Biden Administration’s handling of the border. Even Biden’s appointed border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, has not been to the Rio Grande and McAllen, TX areas where the border is overrun with immigrants.

For some time, various members of the Border Patrol have shown dismay at the way the Biden Administration is handling the border crisis. On Friday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, visited Laredo, Texas. While he was present, many border agents had a heated argument with the US Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz.

A video leaked by a member of the Border Patrol was shared with Fox News. During this video, Ortiz told the agents that “morale is at an all-time low.” Ortiz complained, while Mayorkas was in the room with agents, that the border patrol is losing too many good employees. He also told Mayorkas, “as an organization, we’ve got to start taking care of each other.”

However, as the conversation continued, things between Ortiz and the agents began to get heated.

One agent can be heard on video saying “It’s kinda hard to say that when . . .” and then a few other border patrol agents all said “you keep releasing criminal aliens into the country.”

Ortiz told the border agents present that they are “getting bogged down in the policies and the politics.” Some border patrol agents related that they are no longer allowed to use the term “illegal aliens” to describe immigrants. They then attacked Ortiz when he used the term that they are no longer allowed to.

The video goes on for a few more minutes before one agent tells Ortiz, “For evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That’s exactly what’s happening here. Good mean are doing nothing. You’re allowing illegal aliens to be dropped off in communities.”

Ortiz tried to regain the audience by reminding the agents that they are doing a great job in catching those bringing fentanyl into the country. However, one of the agents retorted, “And under this administration, in the last year, we’ve got the highest fentanyl deaths in the history of our country.”

Later on, some agents would physically turn their backs on Mayorkas in a show of disapproval.

This leaded video comes just days after a separate video shows federal contractors escorting migrants to cities such as White Plains, NY and Jacksonville, FL. The contractors were present on these after-curfew, late-night flights where migrants appear to be whisked to internal American cities in secrecy. Gov. Ron DeSantis (FL) has already filed a lawsuit regarding those flown into Florida.