Free Republic

The unprecedented crisis at the southern border appears to be taking a toll on rank-and-file Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers — with three agents taking their lives in November. This brings the 2022 total suicides within the agency to 14, more than any year in over a decade ... It’s a very serious epidemic that’s happening within the agency,” said US Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), whose congressional district runs along the US-Mexico border from Del Rio to El Paso. While there’s no single reason attributed for the spike in agent suicides, Gonzales feels the ongoing migrant crisis — with...

It seems like only yesterday when Joe Biden’s Customs and Border Protection chief Chris Magnus was saying ‘hell no, I won’t go.’ (Actually, it was two days ago.) It was immediately understandable why Magnus would feel that he didn’t need to resign and was being made to take the fall for the gross errors and incompetence of others. The man had been handed an impossible task without anywhere near the resources required to accomplish it. But last night, he thought better of his options and relented, tendering his resignation. At least for the moment, this decision staves off an ugly...

In January 2017, signs appeared throughout yuppie Brooklyn. In the windows of cafés and shops, a man with pleading eyes and a baby in his coat stared at us with the words “Refugees welcome here.” What did it mean? That refugees could also come and buy the $7 lattes that the brownstone set were buying? Like most people who put signs in windows, the Brooklynites didn’t actually mean it. Refugees were welcome here because it was a poke in the eye to Trump, who wanted to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, not because refugees could actually...

TUCSON, Ariz. – U.S. Border Patrol agents rescued nine migrants and arrested four smugglers during a traffic stop near Nogales, Arizona, early Saturday. Tucson Sector agents conducted a vehicle stop on a Freightliner semitruck pulling a cattle trailer around 1 a.m. After receiving permission to inspect the trailer, agents discovered nine migrants in an enclosed space hidden beneath a false floor. The migrants had no means of escape.

The Supreme Court has weighed in on when federal law enforcement agents can be sued for excessive force. In a 6 – 3 decision on Wednesday, the court ruled against a man who had sued a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent for use of excessive force, USA Today reported. Robert Boule, the owner of the bed and breakfast, Smuggler’s Inn in Blaine, Washington, said that a border patrol agent had pushed him to the ground in 2014 and said that after he reported the agent to his superiors the agent reported him to the IRS. ... “The 6-3 conservative...

The New York Times did an interesting, but biased photo story of how illegal immigrants cross the border to claim asylum in the U.S., one segment of a long chain of events that has seen the transport of more than a million so-called "asylum seekers" into the U.S. in the Joe Biden era. The story begins with this tease, and then moves on to various unverified sob stories of individual migrants. The southern border is seeing a historic spike in migrant crossings. A New York Times photographer documented three ways that people cross the border into the United States. Lots...

EDINBURG, Texas (CBP) – Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol (RGV) agents disrupted three human smuggling events and encountered two large groups resulting in 322 apprehensions. On April 26, Falfurrias Border Patrol Checkpoint agents, after a K-9 alert, referred a truck pulling a flatbed trailer carrying large metal sided boxes to the secondary inspection area. Agents observed a vent, approximately 16 inches by 6 inches on one of the boxes and removed the vent to reveal 40 migrants in a seated position trapped inside. The metal sided box had to be broken apart by unscrewing multiple bolts using a power...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus says the governor of Texas should coordinate with the federal government before busing migrants to Washington, D.C. His remarks follow an order from Governor Greg Abbott to provide buses to take willing migrants already released by federal agencies and transport them to the nation’s capital. “Governor Abbott is taking actions to move migrants without adequately coordinating with the federal government and local border communities,” Commissioner Magnus said in a written statement Thursday afternoon. “CBP has always worked closely with and supported border communities in Texas, many of which CBP personnel call home.”...

You guys ready to get madder than you've ever been? ...

President Joe Biden’s administration is looking to divert United States Border Patrol agents from their mission at the U.S.-Mexico border to send them overseas “to assist” those fleeing from Ukraine amidst Russia’s invasion, a new report states. Even as illegal immigration continues pouring through the nation’s southern border at record levels, Biden hopes to entice Border Patrol agents to sign up voluntarily to aid American citizens, green card-holders, and their immediate relatives fleeing Ukraine into Eastern Europe.

Congress has directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to come up with a plan to scan 100 percent of arriving vehicles at the southern border • Currently, drug traffickers take a gamble when they smuggle illegal narcotics into the U.S. with just 25 out of 500 vehicles per hour being searched •Agency is preparing to roll out new 'nonintrusive' inspection systems to screen significantly more trucks •Powerful high-energy scanners will detect 'anomalies' inside cargo loads •'Multi-energy portals' will zap the cargo areas with high-energy waves, but use safer low-energy screening for the cab, allowing the drivers to remain inside...

The Biden administration has yet to release December border crossing numbers that Customs and Border Protection has circulated internally for at least 10 days, raising concerns on Capitol Hill that the White House is concealing damaging information about the severity of the border crisis. On Jan. 14, CBP submitted the December data in a court filing. Those data revealed 178,840 migrant apprehensions in December, an increase from 173,620 in November. A spokeswoman for CBP told the Washington Free Beacon the December numbers are "scheduled to be released soon," although she did not answer why they were delayed. Congressional Republicans have...

Drugs hidden in vaginal cavity. / CBP EL PASO, Texas – U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers working at the El Paso area ports of entry intercepted a man and woman concealing Fentanyl on their bodies two days in a row. “Seizures of this powerful synthetic opioid continue to rise dramatically all along the southwest border,” said CBP El Paso Director of Field Operations Hector A. Mancha. “CBP officers remain vigilant and dedicated to disrupting the flow of this dangerous narcotic from entering our country and reaching our communities.”

Critics ripped Axios on Sunday after the outlet deleted a tweet referring to Border Patrol agents as "whipping at" Haitian migrants attempting to cross from Mexico into the U.S. at the Southern border. "We deleted a previous tweet that referred to Border Patrol agents as whipping at Haitian migrants. The story has been updated to include comments from some journalists on the border who did not see whipping occur," Axios tweeted, referring to a weekend story it published about Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowing to hire the agents seen on horseback in viral photos that were taken out of...

EDINBURG, Texas – Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol (RGV) agents arrested a criminal migrant armed with a pistol and a bowie knife. A Mara-Salvatrucha gang member and a previously convicted sex offender were also arrested in separate events.

President Biden's expected pick to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Chris Magnus, has a record of defending sanctuary cities and resisting Trump administration orders about undocumented immigrants. Magnus is currently police chief in Tucson, Arizona, where he made headlines for rejecting federal border security grant money from Operation Stonegarden in 2020 — a decision that earned him criticism from Tucson Police Officers Association head Tony Archibald. "For years, this federally funded grant has paid for officer overtime to do proactive, on-site activity in high crime areas," Archibald said . "The Stonegarden deployments have resulted in hundreds of arrests that...

'resident Biden alone caused this border crisis and he alone has the responsibility to stop it,' Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana told The FederalistLast Thursday, Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds told WHO radio in Des Moines that she declined a request by the Biden administration to house illegally present foreign minors. Reynolds became the first GOP governor in the nation to refuse a temporary housing request for illegals trafficked by international drug cartels in league with Communist China to destabilize the United States. She models behavior more lawmakers would be prudent to heed. “This is not our problem,”...

Republicans on the House Committee on Homeland Security have slammed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after the agency deleted a press release that detailed the arrest of two Yemeni illegal immigrants who were identified on a terrorism watch list. On Monday, CBP announced how two Yemeni nationals who were placed on the FBI's terror watchlist were arrested in California after crossing illegally from Mexico into the United States. But the announcement was deleted from the CBP website and Twitter account on Tuesday, on the grounds of 'national security'.

Two Texas sheriffs refused requests from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to help transport migrants into the country, saying they could not allocate limited local resources to support undocumented immigrants. CBP reportedly asked Brooks County Sheriff Urbino "Benny" Martinez and Nueces County Sheriff John Hooper for support transporting migrants into the country amid a surge of arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border. "We just don't have any resources," Martinez told Newsweek...Martinez said his town of Falfurrias lacks a bus depot, a hospital, COVID-19 testing infrastructure and social service organizations, all of which are needed to support the migrants.

There is a direct line from those who attacked the Trump administration for “family separation” at the border to the current pain and suffering of thousands of migrant children. Now that the Biden administration has carried out a policy these critics argued for, the result is a humanitarian disaster, and those who were most vocal about the care of migrant children are now silent.First, the backstory. A legal ruling says the federal government can’t detain migrant children in the United States for more than 20 days. If adults bring children with them to the southern U.S. border, assuming these children...