Is the Dangerous, Scandal-Ridden Border Patrol Being Quietly Disarmed?

The snowballing series of
scandals, abuses, and incidents of misconduct committed by Border
Patrol agents came together in an investigatory piece published by
Politico last week that described the keepers of the national
border—and terrifiers of many who live within it—as America’s “most
out-of-control law enforcement agency.” Now reports out of Tucson
reveal that Customs and Border Protection is taking away Border
Patrol agents’ assault rifles over serviceability concerns—and not
replacing them. Cause? Effect? You decide.

For Politico, Garret M. Graff
pointed out that border protection has exploded in recent years
from a relatively backwater task to the point where “Customs and
Border Protection not only employs some 60,000 total
personnel—everything from desert agents on horseback to insect
inspectors at airports—but also operates a fleet of some 250
planes, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator
drones the military sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s a wide-open task with few restraints, since constitutional
protections are loosened within what the ACLU descibes as the the
“Constitution-free
zone” in a 100-mile band at the border. So Border Patrol not
only watches the actual border, but mans
internal checkpoints and
controls access to some towns in the area. This expansion of
power and personnel has come with a minimum of adult supervision
and problems of abuse, misconduct, and criminal activity that
trouble even some other government agencies. “The FBI in McAllen
had gotten used to investigating assaults and misconduct among
Border Patrol agents,” Graff notes. “It had become the field
office’s top criminal priority.”

the Border Patrol has also become one of the nation’s deadliest
law enforcement agencies over that same period, involved in more
fatal shootings—at least 46—since 2004 than perhaps any other such
agency. (As this summer’s events in Ferguson, Missouri, showed,
definitive statistics on fatal law enforcement shootings are
notoriously difficult to collect.) An internal report last year
that the agency tried to keep secret accused its agents of shooting
their weapons not out of fear for their lives but instead out of
“frustration.”

So, what to do with a small army that seems to have slipped out
of effective control?

Take note of this
complaint on the website of the Tucson-area Border Patrol
union:

Border Patrol M4 rifles are being deadlined at an alarming rate
and not all are being replaced. Again we have to ask “HOW DID THESE
PEOPLE GET IN CHARGE?” Did they honestly think that these rifles
would last for ever and they wouldn’t need to be replaced. How is
it that managers didn’t see this coming?

Tucson’s News 4
expands on the story:

The News 4 Tucson Investigators have uncovered that some U.S.
Border Patrol agents have lost a key part of their arsenal. And
that has agents who patrol along the border here, extremely
worried.

We learned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Offices of
Border Patrol and Training and Development are inspecting the
quality of agents’ M4 carbines throughout Border Patrol sectors
nationwide. But agents tell us, some of those M4s have not been
replaced. And, we’ve learned, agents are required to share rifles
amongst each other.

The news station notes law enforcement experts commenting that
taking the rifles away seems strange. “Prather believes removing
some of the rifles maybe politically motivated. He says he was told
that many of these guns are being removed for issues that are
easily repaired like the firing pin and bolt…That makes him
suspicious that the agency could be disarming its agents.”

Hmmm…Amid concerns that Border Patrol is dangerous and out of
control, the government may be quietly taking guns away from
agents. Interesting.