Apparently Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has more than enough taxpayer funding to deploy a large number of personnel to Washington, D.C. and help impeached president Donald Trump suppress protests over the police murder of George Floyd. On Monday, the agency’s acting commissioner, Mark Morgan, tweeted an image of agents lined up ready to terrify communities there, claiming: “These ‘protests’ have devolved into chaos & acts of domestic terrorism by groups of radicals & agitators. CBP is answering the call and will work to keep DC safe.”
But anyone who’s paid attention to the record knows safety and CBP don’t go together. “Last year CBP officers circulated mockup images of my violent rape ahead of my visit to their facilities,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to Morgan. “They hung framed photos of officers aiming guns at people on the walls […] CBP is the largest law enforcement agency in the country, & it very well may be one of the most dangerous.”
Last year, ProPublica reported on the existence of a violent and racist Facebook group where members, including dozens of border agents, shared racist and violent content, including posts mocking the death of 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez while in Border Patrol custody, and shared a faked image of Donald Trump sexually assaulting Ocasio-Cortez.
Then-Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost was herself a member of the group for a short time but denied to Congress that she knew this racist and violent Facebook group was in fact racist and violent, saying: “I didn’t think anything of it at the time.” Rather than resign outright over her involvement and the existence of the group, Provost quietly retired, penning a CNN op-ed as sort of a farewell where she urged “all of us, as a nation, to resume civil debate” on immigration.
Right. Instead, these agents have been deployed to help suppress peaceful protests over state-sanctioned murders that horrifically continue to repeat. “They do NOT have oversight,” Ocasio-Cortez continued in her series of tweets. “Not even the measures local PDs have. Their culture is toxic, they have 0 accountability, & Congress gave them a blank check. This is dangerous.”
200 million Americans live within the 100 mile zone where officials claim border agents can demand your papers, fanning their lawlessness, chaos, and violence far into the U.S. The American Civil Liberties Union Border Rights Center tweeted CBP is “the largest and least accountable law enforcement agency in the country, has a long track record of abuse and violence. Their presence at marches further terrorizes and militarizes communities who are exercising their right to protest and demand justice.”
