Frustration over President Joe Biden’s liberal border policies has caused some border patrol agents to consider early retirement and others to dub themselves the “U.S. Welcome Patrol.”
“We have so many people coming across, and then we’re out there killing ourselves to catch them, rescue them or whatever it is, and then they’re being released,” Rosemarie Pepperdine told Reuters. “Why even bother?”
Pepperdine is one of many border patrol agents considering early retirement because of the dramatic shift in border policy during the Biden administration.
Reuters conducted a series of interviews with border patrol agents and while some expressed frustration, others said they were “used to” the changes that occur between presidential administrations.
Biden quickly reversed many of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies once he took office, leading to growing dissatisfaction in the agency, Reuters reported.
According to data released by CBP, there were 178,622 encounters between Border Patrol agents and illegal immigrants in April, up from the March record of 173,348. March’s total had been noted as the highest in the past 20 years.
The April figure represents a 944 percent increase from April 2020, when — as the coronavirus was putting its grip on North America — there were 17,106 encounters.
As border apprehensions continue to rise, agents have expressed frustration that many families are being released into the United States to pursue asylum cases even though some Trump-era policies are still in place.
Former agent Gil Maza runs a website that sells an unofficial coin that reads “U.S. Welcome Patrol.”
Are you surprised by the growing frustration among border patrol agents?
He told Reuters that he had sold 78 coins in four days to current and former agents.
“It sheds a little humor on the situation,” Maza said.
“And it’s something that helps us, I guess, mentally and emotionally cope with the situation because especially right now, the situation is pretty dire out there.”
National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd criticized Biden during a news conference with Republican senators Wednesday.
“I can confidently say that President Biden owns this crisis,” he said of the situation at the border. “It is his fault.”
Border Patrol agents are not the only ones frustrated with Biden’s policies.
In a leaked memo viewed by Breitbart, Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner that he could not endorse Biden’s communications and vocabulary policy that went into effect on April 19.
The policy says that the terms “alien, unaccompanied alien children, undocumented alien, illegal alien, and assimilation” must be substituted with “non-citizen, non-citizen unaccompanied children, undocumented non-citizen, and civic integration.”
“Mandating the use of terms which are inconsistent with law has the potential to further erode public trust in our government institutions,” Scott wrote.
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