Just like the military is having a hard time recruiting now that it has gone woke, the Border Patrol is no exception. In fact, law enforcement in general is having a hard time with this woke madness. At this point, I’m suspicious of anyone wanting to join the Border Patrol at a time like this. What’s your motivation? Did you want to serve in the Peace Corps, but decided this pays better and you’re closer to home?

The last person I talked to that seemed to have his head screwed on right I was a cop in a southern state getting paid a terrible salary who joined up solely because his family could use the money. He actually believed in what the Border Patrol mission was supposed to be.

At no time when I was in the Border Patrol would I have ever considered morale to be good. As with a military force, having good morale is essential to getting the mission accomplished.

So, I was forwarded an article from the New York Post describing the current situation with the BP [Distressed border agent on letting in ‘gang members’: ‘I feel like I’m part of the smuggling organization,’ by Joseph Treviño, October 10, 2023].

Border agent on letting in ‘gang members’: ‘I feel like I’m part of the smuggling organization’ https://t.co/q3DEBCPNWb pic.twitter.com/3mxuWnxL5o

— New York Post (@nypost) October 10, 2023

If you think that they are vetting illegal aliens and keeping out gang members, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

I can remember years ago when some of our Agents caught an illegal alien with an MS-13 gang tattoo. It was at a time during the Bush administration when was letting all the Central Americans go due to lack of funds to put them in camp (BP’s slang for immigration detention). They tried to get him to admit he was a gang member, and he said he used to be in MS-13, but was no longer. After some back and forth with the supervisors and CBP counsel, they decided to walk him out the door. He would have had to admit to currently being a member for them to have stopped him.

Later in my career, we were at a training listening to an asylum applicant. It was over the phone, so we couldn’t see the alien, but the interviewer made mention that the applicant had several tattoos. One of them was of an owl and the asylum applicant claimed it was for his favorite “futbol” team. After the interview was over, an experienced agent said that was no futbol tattoo, but Mara 18, sometimes called the 18th Street Gang. The eyes of the owl formed the eight, and somewhere in the tattoo would be a cleverly disguised number one.

I’m not sure what happened in the end with that alien (he had been shot before, and claimed it was because he was being held up, but he may have been involved in a gang fight). However, if the experienced Agent hadn’t been there, no one would have been the wiser about the tattoo. Face it, a lot of the better more experienced and motivated Agents have retired out if they could.

During the Obama administration, the Deceiver-in-Chief took away much of our ability to do transportation checks (bus, train and airplane). Our station had a Senior Agent who had been really good at busting illegal aliens on trans check. He made the comment that, after stopping trans check, once we started doing it again, it was going to take a while for Agents to get back into making arrests. He was right. When Trump came into office, we had a lot of complacent Agents used to not making arrests who resented being assigned to bus or train checks. It took a while to turn things back around. The same will likely be true again if Trump can overcome the fraud.