Biden Admin Assigns Border Agents Who Were Doing Their Job to Desk Duty
Remember when the left claimed fake news was a Republican political tactic? A problem to fight? Now, it’s a reason to put Border Patrol agents who were doing their job on desk duty.
According to USA Today, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has promised to deliver an expedited investigation into the agents who confronted illegal aliens at the Del Rio, Texas, migrant camp on horseback last week, telling Congress he expects an inquiry to be complete “in days. “
“I want to assure you that we are addressing this with tremendous speed and tremendous force,” Mayorkas said Wednesday, noting a number of agents had been placed on administrative duty following the viral photos and videos. “The facts will drive the action we take.”
“It will be completed in days – not weeks,” he added.
Those kinds of assurances don’t make for a particular amount of confidence in the investigation being thorough — or, for that matter, being fair. Remember, we were told the agents were using “whips” or “lassos” against the migrants who were trying to cross the border from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico into Del Rio via the Rio Grande.
Here are two of those tweets from Sawyer Hackett, executive director of People First Future, a progressive political action committee established by former Obama-era Housing and Urban Development secretary and 2020 Democratic presidential contender Julián Castro:
Border patrol is mounted on horseback rounding up Haitian refugees with whips.
This is unfathomable cruelty towards people fleeing disaster and political ruin. The administration must stop this. pic.twitter.com/BSjT91NSj0
— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) September 20, 2021
Here’s the video pic.twitter.com/itFwZfYN45
— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) September 20, 2021
While the uninitiated (or those with a virulent case of confirmation bias) might see a lasso or a whip in the agent’s hands, those are actually the horse’s reins. As Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas — a rare border hawk on the left side of the aisle — pointed out during an appearance on CNN, the Border Patrol doesn’t use Indiana Jones-style crowd control measures.
“Certainly, we got to make sure we treat all the immigrants with respect and dignity, but I will say this. Border Patrol has had those horse brigades for a while. They’ve had them for a while, number one. Number two, they don’t carry whips, and they do not carry lassos,” Cuellar said during a Tuesday appearance on the network.
And yet, there are some who would condemn what the agents did even if there were no whips and lassos involved. To those critics, Cuellar had this to say: “What are they supposed to do, just stand there and let everybody come in? They’re supposed to be enforcing the law.”
Texas Democrat @RepCuellar corrects CNN host who’s upset about border agents on horseback: “The picture you’re talking about, at least the one I have seen, is the rein, the rein of the horse … What are they supposed to do, just stand there and let everybody come in?” pic.twitter.com/csFE4gwkTm
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 21, 2021
This is what logic looks like, however. And logic has been been quickly outpaced by Narrative.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that despite not knowing very much about the circumstances behind the photo, she could safely assume there was almost no circumstance in which it would be acceptable.
Calling the images “obviously horrific,” Psaki admitted she didn’t “have the full context.”
“I can’t imagine what context would make that appropriate, but I don’t have additional details … I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate.”
There was more performative Democrat outrage on Wednesday — including a clip from Rep. Maxine Waters of California that needs to be seen to be believed — and may not even be believed then.
WH Secretary Jen Psaki on footage appearing to show border patrol agents using whips against Haitian migrants coming into the United States from Mexico: “I have seen some of the footage. I don’t have the full context. I can’t imagine what context would make that appropriate.” pic.twitter.com/83O2bjZCyp
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 20, 2021
“And I want to know, in the first place, who’s paying these cowboys to do this work?” Waters said during a news conference. “They’ve got to be gotten rid of. They’ve gotten to be stopped. It cannot go on.
She implored journalists to “write the story. Tell the story about what is going on.”
And what was the story? “Let people know that they’re trying to take us back to slavery days — and worse than that.”
Maxine Waters: Border patrol agents riding on horseback to control migrants are trying to “take us back to slavery days and worse than that.” pic.twitter.com/uLnBQXZX50
— Mike Berg (@MikeKBerg) September 22, 2021
The world according to Waters: Enforcing our border laws when migrants were pouring in through an unsecured part of the Rio Grande to a dangerously overcrowded camp under a bridge in Del Rio is taking us to a place”worse than slavery.”
According to the U.K. Daily Mail, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts called the treatment of the Haitian migrants “egregious and white supremacist behavior.” To be fair, though, Pressley would be willing to apply that label to nigh on anything.
There’s a simple explanation for this, of course. Hugo Gurdon, editor-in-chief of the conservative Washington Examiner, pointed it out in a Tuesday opinion piece: “What were clearly pictured in their hands were horses’ reins. Mounted guards used their horses, as mounted police traditionally do — it’s what the horses are for — to move swiftly back and forth in front of the Haitian influx to keep migrants from coming ashore.”
“In short, the officers were doing their jobs in tough circumstances and should be thanked and supported, not criticized or punished. But in America today, no one working diligently to enforce the law is supported by either the Left in general or by this administration.”
That’s it. Those guards did what they were trained to do because the Biden administration finally realized the optics of the situation in Del Rio were terrible. Now, they’ll end up being sacrificial lambs because the left is stunned that they bothered to enforce immigration law.
In short, yes, desk duty is usually what happens when a law enforcement official is being investigated for impropriety. However, this seems less like an investigation and more like a railroading — with the desk assignment a preemptive punishment.
And when the forces of law and order are being cripples by their own government, the result can only be that the border will become more dangerous for everyone, illegal immigrants, American civilians and law enforcement alike.
The fix is in when the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said at a news conference on Monday that he didn’t necessarily see anything wrong with the pictures and videos, but said “we are going to investigate the facts to ensure that the situation is, as we understand it to be.”
That changed overnight, however, and on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post, Mayorkas said he was “horrified” by them and that what he “observed troubled me profoundly.”
The fix is in when the White House’s mouthpiece says she “can’t imagine what context would make [the footage] appropriate” and the left flank of the Democratic Party is warning this is a harbinger of the Biden administration returning us to the days of the antebellum plantation South.
When Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States calls the behavior “horrible,” it’s tough to imagine it ending well for the agents involved, who are, after all, employees of the federal government.
Maybe they’re not talking about whips and lassos anymore, but they’re also not admitting of the possibility that what they saw was Border Patrol agents doing their job. The fix is in, and you’d have to be blind not to see it.
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