OAN’s Brooke Mallory
5:54 PM – Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Numerous U.S. Border Patrol agents have revealed the atrocities they see in the course of their work—such as decomposing human remains and sexually assaulted children—combined with the overwhelming influx of foreigners under the Biden administration, which is increasing the rate of suicide among Border Patrol ranks.
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In extensive interviews with The Free Press on Wednesday, irate officers manning the U.S.-Mexico border discussed their dreadful experiences and described how the situation is contributing to a mental health crisis that is only getting worse.
“We regularly see things that people should never see, like rotting human remains, abuse of every kind, babies and kids dying or dead,” said one anonymous Border Patrol agent who feared that he would lose his job if his name was reported.
“Do you know what that does to you over time? You have to shut down a part of yourself to keep going,” he added.
Another agent, known only as “Juan,” claimed that since he joined the Border Patrol in Rio Grande, Texas, shortly before President Biden was elected, he has almost daily heard accounts of intense violence and rape.
“I had to sit there and listen to a 13-year-old girl from El Salvador tell me how she’d been raped twice by her smuggler,” he stated. “She was traveling with her 9-year-old brother, and the smuggler said he would hurt the boy if she didn’t cooperate. So she let him do what he wanted.”
According to Customs and Border Protection statistics, at the very least, 7.6 million migrants have crossed the southern border since Biden took office in January 2021. As a result, agents’ jobs have become an exhausting and never-ending stream of capture, process, interview, and paperwork.
“A lot of agents are just trying to go to work and survive,” another anonymous agent explained. “And that’s not where you want to be when you’re in law enforcement.”
At least 14 agents committed suicide in 2022. This was almost twice as many as in 2020, the year before Biden assumed office, and three times as many as in 2014. Individuals who overdosed on drugs as a means of ending their lives were not included in the suicide rate.
“The suicide rate [of Border Patrol agents] is double that of US law enforcement agencies overall,” The Post reported.
Border Patrol does not release public information regarding suicides, thus, the total number of suicide deaths in 2023 was not disclosed, and agent insiders who spoke with the press did not have the most recent figures for the previous year.
Chris Clem, who left the Yuma, Arizona, sector as a chief border agent last year, expressed that many agents are growing “kind of numb” as a result of the horrifying encounters and a general sense of desertion from the Biden administration.
“How would you feel when you have a guy in front of you, demanding asylum, holding his young daughter’s hand, smiling at you, and lying to your face, using the same line he’s been coached what to say to get into the country, even though his rap sheet shows he was arrested for sexual abuse of minors, including the young girl?” said a former agent who referred to himself as “Mark.”
“If you separate the child, she’ll scream and be traumatized. If you keep them together, then you run the very high risk that she’ll be sexually traumatized again. You tell me, which trauma is the lesser evil?” he added.
According to seven agents who spoke with the outlet under pseudonyms, they and their peers will not discuss their severe depression or suicidal tendencies with Border Patrol superiors because doing so would most likely get them fired.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, also explained that those who do ask for mental health assistance are typically put on desk duty, which means they lose out on overtime pay and certain benefits.
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