Posted on 02/02/2017 3:54:53 PM PST by re_tail20
A thick fog recently blanketed the U.S.-Mexico border along Imperial Beach, Calif., a prime opportunity for border crossers to probe vulnerabilities in both the fence and the beleaguered agency patrolling it.
In SUVs or ATVs, Border Patrol agents with video surveillance equipment and binoculars spent hours, as they do every day, scanning the hilly and treacherous terrain that connects Tijuana, Mexico, to Southern California to try and prevent anyone trying to illegally cross the border.
By the next morning, the processing rooms at the U.S. Border Patrol Imperial Beach Station were filled with men. They included two men from Turkey who washed up onshore on surfboards and wearing wetsuits. Federal agents spent hours that morning questioning nearly a dozen detained men who were suspected of being from Pakistan.
It’s just a snapshot of what happens every day along the busy San Diego sector of the U.S. Border. Agents say they are doing all they can to protect the border, but for years have found themselves in a losing battle against a well-financed and sophisticated network of smugglers.
"We are undermanned and there are revisions and renovations that need to be made in the infrastructure along the border," says Chris Harris, a veteran Border Patrol agent and director of legislative and political affairs for the National Border Patrol Council.
Agents hope all that changes under President Donald Trump.
Harris said the unprecedented support the agency has received from Trump will reinvigorate an agency that has for years been hampered by inadequate funding, dismal resources and seesaw policy changes.
On January 25, Trump laid out a forceful yet controversial border security policy through a series of executive orders that included suspending “catch and release,” moving forward on building a border wall and pledging to hire 5,000 more federal agents.
The move drew...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Just respecting what they do must be a huge boost to them. Thank you, President Trump!
I think they swapped morale with the EPA.
Obama had reduced them to being the welcome wagon, that wasn’t what they signed on to do.
I’m sure they will be glad to get back to protecting the border.
This is so true. A good leader can inspire others to great heights. Trump is a humongous wave that can lift and carry others.
And never forget Ramos and Compean.
You must be right. After all, everyone knows that all assets are a zero-sum game, so the BP must have gotten their increased morale at the expense of some other agency.
It’s simple anti-capitalist commieconomics.
Those Border Patrol agents have some of the most dangerous jobs in law enforcement. Those guys are out there at night alone in remote locations. I get scared just thinking about it.
I’ve always said that a “thank you” is he most underused management tool in their toolbox.
The law and order president! So glad Obama is goooooone!
The most maddening part of this story is that the morale of the Border Patrol is the focus, and not that on a random night a “journalist” was actually paying attention we had infiltrators from Turkey and maybe Pakistan detained.
The real story is we have God knows who from Muslim countries crossing the Southern border so frequently that it’s a throwaway line in a feature about Border Patrol morale.
Yep...appreciation and recognition mean a lot.
You must be right. After all, everyone knows that all assets are a zero-sum game, so the BP must have gotten their increased morale at the expense of some other agency.
I thought it was a clever and humorous quip.
The surfboards and wetsuits seemed a pretty clever ploy.
I wonder how many have gotten in that way...
I wonder who brought them all the way from Turkey and then supplied the wetsuits and surfboards?
A friend of mine was Border Patrol around Ciudad Juarez. He got shot at literally weekly.
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