There are only 12 Border Patrol agents manning a 245-mile stretch of the southern border in Del Rio, Texas, even though there are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants flooding the region every month.
A spokesman for Border Patrol’s union said the immigration crisis, which has only continued to get worse, is taking a serious toll on the mental and physical health of the agents charged with securing the border.
“Morale is in the toilet,” Jon Anfinsen told the Washington Examiner.
“Morale is low because agents aren’t allowed to do their job—if our job is to be out patrolling the border in between the ports of entry and actively searching for people who have crossed illegally, but we’re not allowed to go do that job, it basically creates this defeated feeling in everyone.”
A former senior official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees Border Patrol, confirmed that agents are discouraged, saying this lag in morale is evident in “increased processing times” for migrants.
“Agents are just flat tired, and we are seeing and hearing it,” the official explained.
This isn’t the first immigration crisis Border Patrol agents have had to deal with, but because the Biden administration refuses to crack down on illegal immigration, they feel “burned out and there’s really no end in sight,” Anfinsen said.
“Everyone shows up to work sort of downtrodden, almost dead inside, for lack of a better term,” Anfinsen added. “They’re not allowed to [do] the job, and they know that people are getting away every single day, every hour.”
One federal agent who works for CBP in Texas said officials can spot groups of illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande River but “there are no agents available” to arrest them.
Another agent in Arizona said the administration has left certain parts of the border wide open and “brutally spread thin with manpower.”
“The mission is no longer Deter, Detect, Detain. It is wait until they have all crossed, Uber them to the station and process,” the agent said. “Morale is below the Mason/Dixon line. We need more agents on the line.”
