DHS finally investigates Border Patrol policies on deadly force

Border Patrol agents.  That would be like counting umbrellas during Hurricane Katrina.

There are at least three major reality checks which are ignored only at the peril of our agents on the line.  The first is that Border Patrol agents, since their rapid recruitment to meet the numbers of new agents mandated by Congress, have consistently received less and less professional academy training.  Standards have been lowered so that a higher percentage of agents successfully graduate.  Actual training at the national academy shrank from more than five months to slightly more than fifty days.  So the end result of adding an additional 21,000 agents, on top of those needed to replace a high annual turnover rate, is men and women who must make lightening-quick decisions in dangerous situations.  These agents require more training, not less.  The on-the-job mentorship that many Border Patrol managers tout is, unfortunately, a poor remedy for months lost at the academy under the watchful eye of trained and experienced law enforcement professionals.

The second reality check is to begin to fathom the implications and consequences of explosive growth: the Border Patrol has grown too fast and too furiously.  The current culture among the majority of Border Patrol agents in that this largest federal law enforcement agency in our country validates and supports excessive force.  Indeed, this is the history of the Border Patrol as repeatedly documented since its inception in 1924.  While gradually changing to resemble other federal law enforcement agencies, Border Patrol institutional culture still allows with impunity for agents to harass, abuse, and harm those they have interdicted. 

Finally, as recently reported in these pages, Border Patrol agents continually have to rely on decades-old sensors as one of their primary surveillance technologies (HSNW, 23 October 2012). While the money has been appropriated by Congress, the majority of funds remain locked up in the CBP internal bureaucracy instead of supporting the vital needs of our agents on the line.  Agents must be given the proper tools to do their job.

To change the dysfunctional culture prevalent among some Border Patrol agents in certain border stations will require much more than an investigation by DHS’s Office of Inspector General of policies regarding the use of deadly force.  What is required at a bare minimum is more, not less, professional training at the national academy, a legitimate mentorship program for all new agents by experienced mentors, legitimate agency support for continued professional development of agents, promotions based on merit rather than paternalistic decision-making, and a number of other reforms neither DHS nor the CBP are willing to acknowledge.

Until DHS and the U.S. Border Patrol begin to consider a variety of organizational reforms directed at institutional culture, any results from this current investigation will be more a public relations effort than a legitimate attempt to protect the lives and well-being of Border Patrol agents and those who attempt to illegally cross our national borders.

Robert Lee Maril, a professor of sociology at East Carolina University and founding director of the Center for Diversity and Inequality Research, is the author of The Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.-Mexico Border. He blogs at leemaril.com.