Customs and border patrol (CBP) is back in the news and not in a good way. In particular, it as come to light that a group of agents and former agents had a facebook group where they mocked and made bad comments about migrants as well as some lawmakers. This is under investigation.

The group has 9500 members and sounds like some poor judgment for some of the posts. This comes at same time that poor conditions have been revealed at places like Clint, TX.

This is unfortunate and I hope CBP and the administration address the worst abuses and get ahead of this, rather than just counter-attacking those making the reports, such as this Fox article starts to do.

Reports from longer ago, also point to a poor culture.

The border patrol is a large organization and needs support of the local communities where it operates. I expect the organization to have diversity with some inappropriate behavior – as well as folks that engage well with migrants. So I think it is both wrong to (1) tarnish the entire organization with these views and (2) have them not be addressed. We will see how this unfolds…

[unfortunately, I do see some parallels with police brutality conditions that came to light – where it became a flash point and way to rile up partisans on both extremes.]