
David McNew / Getty photo at Newsweek. Caption: “U.S. Border Patrol agents carry out special operations near the U.S.-Mexico border fence.”
Even though Donald Trump has put off, for now, his push for a border wall, the budget request that Congress is considering this week includes money to start hiring 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 10,000 ICE agents.
This is as unnecessary as a border wall, and we just posted a new commentary at WOLA’s website explaining why.
I wrote the Border Patrol section. I lay out two big reasons why it makes no sense to increase the agency’s size by another 25 percent.
- Undocumented migration across the U.S.-Mexico border was at 40-year lows even before it plummeted further after Trump’s inauguration. This hardly warrants a wave of new hires.
- Another round of fast hires could compound Border Patrol’s management issues and further erode protections against corruption and rights abuses.
Read the whole thing at WOLA’s site.