Years Ago, the Border Patrol's Discipline System Was Denounced as 'Broken.' It's Still Not Fixed.

[babylonsister]

Years Ago, the Border Patrol’s Discipline System Was Denounced as “Broken.” It’s Still Not Fixed.
Gregory Bull/AP
By A.C. Thompson ProPublica
June 22, 2019 9:45 am

This article first appeared at ProPublica.


Perhaps the most far-reaching idea was to reclassify the more than 40,000 Border Patrol agents and customs officers as “national security employees,” just as all FBI agents and employees at a number of other Homeland Security agencies currently are. Taking away their status as civil servants, the thinking went, would make it easier to fire corrupt and abusive employees.

It was, to be sure, an extreme measure. But the panel, a subcommittee of a larger Homeland Security advisory council, had been created late in President Barack Obama’s second term because U.S. Customs and Border Protection seemed in crisis, and the panel subsequently determined that the agency was plagued by a system that allowed bad actors to stay on the payroll for years after they’d engaged in egregious, even criminal, misconduct. Because of civil service protections, a Border Patrol agent who’d been disciplined for bad behavior could challenge his or her punishment through four rounds of escalating appeals before taking the case to an arbitrator or a federal hearing board.

And the panel — headed by William Bratton, who had run police departments in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles — was deeply concerned about the persistent strain of lawlessness among CBP employees. In a preliminary 2015 report, the panel had noted that “arrests for corruption of CBP personnel far exceed, on a per capita basis, such arrests at other federal law enforcement agencies.” CBP, the panel’s members concluded, was “vulnerable to corruption that threatens its effectiveness and national security.”

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Perhaps most significant: The panel recommended that CBP hire 350 internal affairs investigators over a three-year period and task them with looking into misconduct and corruption. So far, the agency has brought on only about 50 investigators.

Some experts on immigration and border protection fear that the prospects for lengthy and lasting reforms of CBP have dimmed under the current administration.

“They’re dragging their feet,” said Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, an advocacy group focused on holding CBP accountable. “What’s the motivation behind this taking so long?”

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/years-ago-the-border-patrols-discipline-system-was-denounced-as-broken-its-still-not-fixed

[EarnestPutz]

1. This is dis-heartening. I've thought that the Border Patrol were, for the most part, the good guys..

...when it came to interactions with refugees and immigrants. ICE was created to be the law enforcement arm dealing with the border and they have the well earned reputation of being populated with a number of brutal, bullet-headed bigots who enjoy mistreating people. To hear Border Patrol people described today as criminal, lawless and corrupt, after hearing yesterday that it their agents who take reporters aside and complain about how they are required to warehouse children in deplorable conditions, makes me think that there is no end to this madness.