Border Patrol agents are protesting an amendment to the immigration reform bill, which would add $38 billion to border security spending and add nearly 20,000 agents. The officers claim that such a hiring surge would compromise quality.
Last month, Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)
introduced a last-minute amendment to the immigration reform
bill, which garnered Republican support and helped pass the
legislation in the Senate. The amendment increases spending on
the US-Mexican border by $46.3 billion in the first 10 years, and
provides funds to grow the Border Patrol from 21,394 agents to
40,000.
The amended bill passed 67-27 in the Senate and now awaits its
vote in the House.
But leaders of the union representing 17,000 Border Patrol
officers are starkly opposed to the amended legislation, and
argue that doubling the number of agents would lead to hurried
and poorly conducted background checks and loosened hiring
standards. In a rush to hire the 20,000 additional agents,
corners would be cut, training would be shortened, and the
government might mistakenly hire criminals.
Union leaders are basing their concerns on the hiring surge that
occurred over the past eight years, when earlier mandates passed
under former President George W. Bush forced the Border Patrol to
double in size.
“The last time they hired any large number of Border Patrol
agents … they were given a badge or a gun and put out on the
field and then a red flag would come up by the time they finally
did a background check,” National Border Patrol Council
spokesman Shawn Moran told Yahoo! News. “…We really do
appreciate the intent of Senators Hoeven and Corker with the
increase in manpower. We just think it can be done better and,
frankly, cheaper.”
During the last hiring surge, thousands of applicants with
criminal backgrounds applied for a job at the Border Patrol,
including one who admitted kidnapping and ransoming hostages in
the Ivory Coast and several who had molested children or
committed rape, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Andrew
Becker discovered. Many of these applicants made it all the way
through the hiring process and were stopped after taking the
polygraph test. But thousands of other applicants were hired
during the 2006 surge without undergoing this exam.
Between 2004 and 2012, Border Patrol employees were arrested more
than 2,000 times, and union leaders are concerned that another
hiring surge would allow more criminals to slip through the
cracks.
“I know a few agents that are a menace to society, but they
have a badge and a gun,” a veteran agent and training
instructor told ABC 10 News last January.
Instead of hiring thousands of new agents, Moran said it would be
more effective and cheaper for current agents to be given the
option to work 10-hour days instead of eight-hour days. Working
overtime would increase their hourly rate, but also avoid the
expenses of hiring and training thousands of new agents and
reduces the risk of conducting hurried background checks.
“Don’t get me wrong: Could we use 20,000 more agents? Yes.
That’d be great,” Chris Cabrera, the vice president of a
chapter of the Border Patrol union in the Rio Grande Valley of
Texas, told Yahoo. “We’re sitting on a porous border. Twenty
thousand is a great number, but I don’t see it as an achievable
goal.”
Republished with permission from: RT