Border Patrol agents are committing more crimes than the people they arrest.
- Jenn Budd
- Mar 25
- 2 min read
Since 2018, Border patrol agents as a population have committed more crimes than the migrants they arrest.
There is not a week that goes by that Border Patrol chiefs are not crowing on social media platforms about the criminal migrants their agents apprehend trying to cross our borders without inspection. I can remember feeling proud as an agent when I was able to apprehend and identify a convicted drug smuggler or child rapist. Reentry after a criminal deportation is a serious felony. Known in Border Patrol as a twenty-six for 8 USC 1326, it comes with a minimum sentence of two years, sometimes more.
The trouble was, it rarely happened.
I knew more agents who committed rape, theft, drug smuggling. This is why the agency began including immigration violations in its statistics. By their own accounts, Border Patrol agents have committed more crimes as a population than the migrants they arrest every year since 2018. They had to add immigration violations of crossing without inspection and reentry without inspection to make their agents appear less criminal than their prey. It is only once you remove immigration violations and compare crimes such as homicide, rape, child molestation, theft, robberies, DUIs, narcotics and smuggling that we see the truth.
It is important to note that Border Patrol and its parent agency CBP, claim that having less than 1% of its agents arrested each year is within law enforcement agency norms. They are proud about this as you see below.
That’s interesting because the migrants they arrest every year also have a rate of less than 1%. Yet the agency and administration want Americans to criminalize every single migrant because of this statistic, while their own agents are more criminal. Yes, there are immigrants who commit crimes, just as there are Americans who commit crimes. Yet, we do not criminalize every single American for the actions of a small percentage.
Of course the rate for migrants is a criminal conviction and the rate for the agents is a criminal arrest. The difference is that agents are rarely prosecuted even when arrested, and the migrants are always prosecuted. In the rare instances when agents are prosecuted and plea guilty, they are often given light sentences like the Tucson Sector BORTAC Deputy Commander who pleaded guilty to molesting his two daughters for over eleven years and received lifetime probation.
Seems if Border Patrol can be happy about its less than 1% of its agents committing crimes, we should be okay with the same statistic when it comes to migrants.
