Border Patrol agents are struggling with low morale as they come to terms with a new normal of attempting to stop tens of thousands of border crossings each month, said Jon Anfinsen, the president of the National Border Patrol Union chapter in Del Rio, Texas.
“Morale is just, it’s just kind of nonexistent,” Anfinsen told NTD News. “And it’s been that way for a while. The past couple of years have been rough.”
Four or five years ago, a busy week in his sector would have consisted of intercepting about 1,000 people attempting to cross the border, Anfinsen said.
“Then, we jumped up to do weeks where we had 12,000 to 13,000 in a week, and then, now, we’re down to about 4,000 to 5,000 in a week [in Del Rio],” he said. “So we’re still incredibly busy.”
Part of the difficulty in maintaining morale, Anfinsen says, is the feeling that agents are trained to do a job but “not allowed to do it.”
Border Patrol agents increasingly have to deal with asylum claims at the border, when those claims should be handled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, he said.
Border Crossings Slowing Somewhat
Anfinsen said there had been a decrease in border-crossing attempts in recent months, although still much higher than in 2019 and 2020 under President Donald Trump. Border Patrol agents recorded about 6,000 to 7,000 crossing attempts per week in 2019 and 2020, according to Anfinsen. He said that crossings had risen to as high as 50,000 per week throughout most of 2022 but have fallen somewhat since November 2022, with agents now recording about 30,000 crossings per week.“So 30,000 now, I guess, is still terrible, but at least we’re just happy it isn’t 50,000 at the moment,” he said.
“It’s made a difference, a little bit. Some of them are now going toward the ports of entry, which is officially where people are supposed to request asylum,” Anfinsen said.
Still, the Border Patrol union official said the parole program doesn’t fix the broader asylum program problems, “where people are allowed just to come in and essentially clog up the system with claims that ultimately aren’t going to work for them.” He said the large influx of new asylum claims is “basically preventing people with real asylum claims from having a timely chance to claim asylum.”
Border Policies
Anfinsen credited the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, dubbed the “Remain in Mexico” policy, with sharply decreasing border-crossing attempts.“There were plenty of debates about whether that was appropriate or ethical or whatever, but what you can’t argue with is that it worked, it produced results,” Anfinsen said of the Trump-era policy. “We went from having tens of thousands of people cross the border, and it turned off almost just like flipping a light switch. It’s effective.”
Anfinsen said Biden administration policies such as the parole program and the CBP One app have had a similar impact on reducing border crossings, “except people in those categories then go to the port of entry to request asylum and then get released. So it doesn’t actually do anything to change the number of people who actually want to cross the border.”
Biden and other Democrats have called for creating a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who entered or remain in the country and to provide funding for more personnel to process asylum cases.
“Congressional Republicans have refused to consider my comprehensive plan,” Biden said in January. “And they rejected my recent request for an additional $3.5 billion to secure the border and funds for 2,000 new asylum personnel—asylum officers and personnel, and 100 new immigration judges—so people don’t have to wait years to get their claims adjudicated, which they have a right to make a claim legally.”
