Border Patrol achieves its goal of becoming THE national police force.

In 2021, I wrote a piece titled, “Border Patrol’s dream of becoming a national police force is becoming a reality.”

“Of all of the law enforcement agencies in the federal government, this is the most dangerous one to unleash on the country. The Border Patrol questionably asserts the power to stop anyone regardless of status, enter into private property, check proof of citizenship, and routinely execute searches without warrants as required by the Fourth Amendment. No other federal agency presumes to have these powers.”

I was called an idiot by the Border Patrol Union, a fear monger by mainstream media, a disgruntled employee by both the left and the right. But if you were an ex-Border Patrol agent or studied the agency for decades as I have, you would know the history as I wrote in that piece:

“This was a plan designed and pushed by former Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar to inject CBP into every major national event. That’s exactly what the Border Patrol has been doing with the deployment of BORTAC— Border Patrol’s swat-like team — patrolling sanctuary cities and conducting swat-like raids on immigrant families across the country. Because the Border Patrol claims jurisdiction within 100 miles of all land and water borders, which includes over two-thirds of the population in the United States, everybody’s safety is now at risk.”

Don’t say that I did not warn you. 

I was not in the least bit surprised to see the Associated Press report two days ago that the Border Patrol would be taking over ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). The agency had already infiltrated its parent agency CBP (Customs and Border Protection) after Trump took office this second time by placing former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott as commissioner. Scott has zero experience as a CBP officer, no college degree in management of such a large agency dealing in trade, asylum processing or the many other jobs required by CBP at our ports of entry. However, as a chief in the Border Patrol, Scott is heavily experienced in bringing in the violence and knows extensively how to cover up the criminality of his agents. 

In May of 2010, after his agents beat to death a man for demanding medical treatment for an injury caused by an agent, Scott’s secret and illegal coverup team known as the San Diego Critical Incident Investigative Team (CIIT) interfered with the San Diego Police Department’s homicide investigation of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas. Under Scott’s supervision, agents obstructed justice by destroying the video evidence, allowing agents to leave the scene, failing to identify witnesses to the incident, destroying other physical evidence such as taser prongs and the victim’s clothing, using an immigration civil subpoena to obtain the medical report (which is not legal) and then refusing to turn that report over to San Diego PD homicide investigators.

No agent was ever held accountable for Anastasio’s death.

On May 1, 2025, nearly fifteen years after Anastasio was killed, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) found that:

“…this Commission finds that, although Mr. Hernandez was taken to the hospital on May 28, 2010, at 21:48, Station officials informed the appropriate authorities on May 29 at 2:12 –more than four hours later the San Diego Police Department was notified at 12:00, and processing of the Whiskey-2 area began at 13:52.

Thus, more than 16 hours passed since the occurrence of the events, and the investigation team went to the crime scene to gather information, without any record in the file that the area had been previously secured in order to safeguard the evidence and prevent contamination.

On the contrary, what is established is that prior to this, the United States Border Patrol’s Critical Incident Investigation Team (CIIT) arrived at the scene. In this regard, the Commission has four observations to make. First, it is not clear what legal basis could justify the intervention of this body in the investigation of an excessive use of force resulting in the death of a person. Second, there is no basis in the national legal framework to support the CIIT’s priority access to the crime scene, and other evidence –such as Mr. Hernández’s medical records. Third, the State has not demonstrated compliance by this body with the aforementioned requirements. Finally, it is highlighted with concern that the CIIT refrained from forwarding the collected information to the San Diego Police Department, which could represent an obstacle to the investigation whose jurisdiction is not in dispute.”

While you will not find much reporting on this astounding IACHR report in American media, the United States is a participating partner within the commission and often uses it to condemn other countries for their human rights abuses.

On September 28, 2012, Chief Scott struck again with another coverup. This time, his illegal coverup team was unavailable. Fortunately for him, orders were given for the San Diego Sector Intelligence Unit to round up witnesses. Scott himself rushed to the seen in Chula Vista where one of his agents in plain clothes without identification visible, shot a US citizen and mother of five. Valeria Tachiquin was killed instantly when Border Patrol Agent Justin Tackett unloaded ten bullets into her upper body as she sat in her car. She was unarmed, and was trying to get away from this unknown man who continually placed himself in front of her car to block her. 

Chief Scott stood before cameras immediately after the killing and before any investigation had commenced to claim that she tried to run Agent Tackett over. Yet, witnesses came forward and stated Agent Tackett was firing from a standing position and that other agents placed witnesses in their cars to prevent them from speaking with Chula Vista Police Department investigators: 

After the incident, Chief Scott and Border Patrol press information officers leaked out as much negative information as they could find about Valeria’s past. But when local 10 News discovered Agent Tackett’s long history of abuse and violating people’s rights that extended all the way back to his days working for the Imperial County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy, Border Patrol suddenly stopped talking and stated they did not want to influence the case. Still, the CIIT and Intelligence Unit did their job and Agent Tackett was transferred to Tucson Sector to continue wearing the green uniform. 

Again, no one was held accountable.

Rodney Scott embodies the culture of the US Border Patrol. The agents selected to take over ICE, whomever they are, do as well. One cannot rise to these ranks without being willing to coverup the crimes of Border Patrol agents. Using the coverup teams that are now housed under CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility and knowing to call them in first before the real use of force investigators arrive is standard operating procedure within the agency. In over 101 years, no Border Patrol agent has been successfully prosecuted for killing a person while on-duty. 

What Americans are witnessing in their neighborhoods is the Border Patrol-ification of the immigration agencies. On the southern border, every single night, in multiple sectors, agents perform dangerous pursuits and illegal PIT maneuvers, ramming cars they “suspect” may have undocumented persons. They spike vehicles driving at high speeds even though training says it can cause fatal rollovers. They bust out windows of cars without ever asking anyone’s citizenship and then shoot the drivers as they run along side the car. They chase them into known dangerous corners, into rivers, into canals, into other innocent cars just coming home from work.

All for a crime of crossing the border without inspection which is a misdemeanor. 

Trump trusts the Border Patrol, and they love him. The union was responsible for delivering his message of “open borders” and escorting right-wing media to every apprehension they could find prior to Trump taking office a second time. Even for creating some fake crossings. This was all in an attempt to make Americans believe there was a “migrant invasion” occurring, when in reality it was caused by Trump and the Border Patrol’s own policies of shuttering the legal asylum system. Closing legal avenues forces people to cross illegally every time. It was not an “invasion,” but CBP refusing to process people. People who were genuinely seeking asylum the legal way. 

It is important to understand the cultural differences between ICE, CBP and the Border Patrol. 

ICE normally targets those with criminal warrants and records. They are investigators and are supposed to build cases with probable cause and evidence for judges to consider if someone should be deported. They are by no means honorable, but that is their intended purpose.

When it comes to immigration enforcement, CBP processes asylum seekers and other varieties of people seeking legal entry into the US. It is a much more controlled environment at the ports of entry, and one in which the officers have an immense amount of authority over those seeking entry.

Border Patrol is looked down upon by both ICE and CBP as the “thugs of immigration.” (In my day, we were called “the butthole of the federal service.”) The agency is known for hiring people with criminal records including child sexual assault, DUIs, cops in the process of being removed from other agencies, those with cartel ties and even undocumented applicants. 

Border Patrol is the agency doing the violent ripping of children from their parents, the dangerous high speed chases that not only harm migrants but kill and forever disable many innocent Americans, the deterrence policies where we purposefully push migrants not allowed “to do it the legal way” out to the most lethal terrain to cross, fully aware that they will likely die or suffer sever amounts of physical and emotional trauma. 

The Border Patrol is the law enforcement of the wild west. It is where politicians do not care what we do because migrants cannot vote, nor do they donate to political campaigns which makes them the perfect scapegoats. It is where agents can sexually abuse their own children, and be working for a Border Patrol contractor before they are even sentenced to lifetime probation. It is where they can be caught on video committing the exact same allegations made against them, and they are acquitted. It is where Rodney Scott can order the tear gassing of women and children seeking asylum as they stand in Mexico without repercussions just for the hell of it. It is where agents know that their chiefs will ensure the coverup teams will botch the evidence identification and collection so badly that juries cannot convict them when they reach into Mexico and put ten bullets in the back of a child as he walks down the street. 

Everything you are seeing in your cities and neighborhoods has occurred down here on the southern border for generations. The beatings, tasings, less than lethal ammunition assaults, ramming, spiking, PIT maneuvers, guns in your face - that is the Border Patrol I know and remember well. It is done in the most desolate of places, on the spider webs of dirt roads, on the little two-lane highways that are mostly empty. It is what I wrote about extensively in my memoir. 

If I were a high-ranking ICE or CBP officer, I would see this as a hostile takeover. I would be offended that the administration trusts Border Patrol agents more than it trusts me.

The Border Patrol has just reached their goal as the national police force. With their management in control of ICE and CBP, they not only control in between the ports, they now control the ports themselves, the deportations and CBP’s vast surveillance of Americans. They are Trump’s private and secret police. Trump can trust the Border Patrol will violate American citizens’ constitutional rights because they have always done so. 

Buckle-up buttercups. The violence has just begun.