The Fatal Flaw in the Border Patrol’s Rescue Program
September 24, 2024 at 07:30PMThe Missing Migrant Program, run by the Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol, is meant to prevent deaths, but it might be causing them. Tanvi Misra examines the paradox at the heart of the program—it purports to be dedicated to migrants’ safety, but the agency running it is chiefly concerned with border security—and asks whether law enforcement and humanitarian aid can ever be complementary goals:
Many local officials and residents believe that the Border Patrol should bear primary responsibility for migrant rescues and recoveries. The agency is part of CBP, which is itself part of the Department of Homeland Security, and its resources dwarf those of local emergency teams and nonprofits. But some aid workers and border researchers see a conflict of interest between the agency’s primary mandate, which is to detain and deport migrants, and the humanitarian goal of saving lives. Both outside critics and Border Patrol agents acknowledge that the two goals are intertwined, but only the former see this as a problem.
Type Investigations and High Country News looked into the complicated relationship between the Border Patrol’s law enforcement and rescue operations, using internal documents, data logs, congressional reports, migrant accounts and the testimony of agents. These records reveal how the agency’s dogged pursuit of migrants can increase the danger for those same migrants, occasionally ending in tragedy. Migrants drown or fall off cliffs; they die in car crashes and from the direct use of force by Border Patrol agents. While the agency does appear to pick up thousands of migrant callers alive, those rescues often end in arrest and deportation. So far, there has been little public accountability for the program’s failures, while the data shows that hundreds of migrants who reach out for help fall through the cracks and are never seen again.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/09/24/the-fatal-flaw-in-the-border-patrols-rescue-program/
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