(Headline USA) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reportedly met with the Border Patrol agents who were falsely accused of whipping migrants in 2021, but he refused to apologize to them.
The private meeting took place on Wednesday in Uvalde, Texas, according to a local news outlet.
Sources close to the DHS said Mayorkas intended on apologizing to Border Patrol Chief Jason Owen and the other agents who were smeared over the alleged whipping incident, but never did. Instead, Mayorkas merely listened to the agents, who explained how the accusations affected their lives and careers.
Despite Mayorkas’s non-apology, the meeting was “professional and respectful,” according to Fox News.
The “whipping scandal” followed shortly after the Biden administration’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal, and to many it appeared that Democrats and the media were cynically using it as a distraction to change the news cycle into one more favorable.
In fact, they continued to push the bogus story even after it had been debunked and disavowed by the photographer who took the photographs.
Mayorkas was one of the first Biden administration officials to react to images of the agents riding on horseback with split reins while trying to block migrants from entering the U.S. near Del Rio, Texas.
He called the images “horrifying,” claiming they “conjured up images of what has occurred in the past,” referring to slavery in the U.S.
President Joe Biden also publicly denounced the agents.
“To see people treated like they did, horses barely running over, people being strapped—it’s outrageous,” he told reporters.
“I promise you, those people will pay,” Biden said of the agents. “There will be an investigation underway now and there will be consequences. There will be consequences.”
However, a subsequent Customs and Border Protection internal investigation found that the agents did not carry whips nor strike anyone with their reins, and that no migrants were harmed during the incident.
Even if Mayorkas and Biden did apologize, law enforcement advocates say it would be “too little too late.”
“They dragged through the mud not only the border patrol agents on horseback but also the border patrol service,” said retired Homeland Security special agent in charge for San Antonio Ari Jimenez.
