Border Patrol chief Carla Provost admitted to Congress on Thursday that she was indeed a member of the racist, misogynist, and vile Facebook group in which agents mocked the death of a migrant child under their watch, but claimed she had no idea it was a racist, misogynist, vile Facebook group where agents mocked the death of a migrant child under their watch.
“I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” Provost told the House Appropriations Committee, saying she logged in to Facebook “very, very rarely” and really only did so just to see how her department "feels I am doing.” Surely there must be other ways to tally that besides using a group dubbed “I’m 10-15,” government code for “aliens in custody,” but whatever you say, Chief Provost.
She further told lawmakers that she first heard about the group’s posts—which promoted physical and sexual assault against sitting House members—when the rest of us did. "Let me be clear, on July 1 was the first time that I saw those highly offensive and highly unacceptable posts when I saw them in the ProPublica report,” she said.
Following that initial report, Provost promised that “any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable,” but when further reporting revealed Provost had been a group member for a time, the agency fell silent and wouldn’t say whether she would be included in the ongoing investigation of at least 70 employees.
Provost appeared to offer no apologies to legislators targeted by the group, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she did defend herself, saying that "not only did I self-report” to investigators, but “I turned my entire Facebook account over. I gave them my log-in and my password." She also defended her agents, saying “there are bad doctors, there are bad nurses, there are bad teachers, but we don’t vilify the entire group of those individuals.”
Throwing doctors, nurses, and teachers—many of whom have spoken out in defense of migrant children abused by Border Patrol—under the bus to defend yet another gross episode from Border Patrol is also gross, but, then again, this is Border Patrol. As I’ve written before, the whole damn agency is rotten, and that goes from the top on down.
