This story originally appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
. “Either this president will win again, and Congress will be forced to work with him. Or a new president will get elected and do things a different way.”
not necessarily
"He searched out loud for a term that might be more accurate. Gulag felt too strong. Jail didn’t feel strong enough.
emigration depots?
I imagine the purpose of the article is to reaffirm our common humanity. But all I could hear as I read this was “Not my fault. I was just doing my job.” It’s not an excuse and this is not okay.
What keeps him in now, even as his job has morphed into one he and his wife are uncomfortable talking about in public, is that he earns about $100,000 a year, including overtime and holiday pay. He has a top-of-the-line health insurance plan that, among other things, covered nearly the entire cost of his child’s birth. In a little more than a decade, when he turns 51, he’ll be eligible to retire with a full pension that probably won’t cover the cost of a house on the beach, he said, but will give him the freedom to “do just about anything else I want, and not have to worry.”
So here’s the question this guy has to ask himself: What if things just keep getting worse and worse?
At what point does he walk away, or does he continue to rationalize that if he just hangs on, he’ll have a very nice retirement package to look forward to? What kind of horror is he going to have to justify to himself in the meantime? Will he have any humanity left when he finally retires?
The Nazi concentration camps did not start out as death camps. They were not too dissimilar to what we’re now seeing in the US.
It’s very easy to blame the poor employees who are ordered to do this stuff, and with inadequate staffing and resources. Since we can’t remove Trump, let’s just go punish all the people who are following orders, have lengthy careers of public service behind them and don’t have the financial luxury to just up and quit and give all that up.
Unless you’re-- at a minimum-- marching outside your Congresscritter’s offices holding protest signs, you’re just as complicit in this as they are.
Perhaps these agents need to be reminded of the Nuremberg trials.
“The agent compared himself to the cynical donkey in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” who survives by never sticking his neck out.”
The reference was a bit of a surprise in the context.
Not sure if that completely applies. This line moves it to a sense of fatalism instead.
" trying to communicate to the lawyers that the detainees were not the only ones at the facility who felt trapped. "
As does this one.
"Frye said, recalling her encounter with the agent. “What I thought to myself was, ‘How sad is it that this young man who probably wants to be of service to his country is stuck doing this.’”
One thing illustrated was this agent was there as a process of his occupation. It might sound unfeeling when he discusses how he wants to get to retirement, but for him he is talking about his career. This situation did not exist in the same form two years back. So it is all new to him as well. He did not land there as some zealot who stepped into the Border Patrol recently, instead this is what his agency and mission have become. I bet he spends a lot of time tossing the stay in or get out question right now.
Maybe I am being overly compassionate when I should not be, but I can see his dilemma and distress easily.
Very easy to demonize folks from a distance, say “of course they should just quit their jobs, do the right thing”.
I tend to notice that the same folks who say that never seem to offer to give up their careers to fight against this stuff.
He doesn’t have to “give up his career.”
He only needs to find another place to pursue it.
There are plenty of law enforcement jobs in the U.S. that provide good pay, benefits, and early retirement.
That was an excellent, thought provoking piece. Whether or not you chose to feel any empathy, or sympathy for this man, it’s aways valuable to see the experience through the eyes of people on the ground.
Then, he said, there are those who are “just tired of all the chaos” of a broken immigration system and “see no end in sight.”
Well, they should definitely keep voting Republican.
I felt the same way reading Klaus Barbie’s memoirs.
DHS is pretty much where most of those jobs are in the government. And if you’re say to go outside of the Feds, then by definition you are telling him he has to give up his career.
Was there a point, or was snark the only objective?
And, while he didn’t embrace the term concentration camp, he didn’t dispute it either. He searched out loud for a term that might be more accurate. Gulag felt too strong. Jail didn’t feel strong enough.
Kudos to this agent who appears to have some humanity left, but there is no term more accurate than concentration camp. I understand that he might not be able to reconcile his view of himself with the implications of working in a concentration camp, but that’s what it is.
Ultimately, there are people on any side of the issues who are suffering because of what Trump has put into play. Collateral damage whether you are in the cage or run the cage.
The overt cruelty is a feature, not a bug. And using poor people to inflict misery on even poorer people is a tactic as old as upright-walking primates. It’s so sad how much the human race continues to regress, and at an increasingly exponential rate…
These are my questions:
Was it better under Bush II, Obama, or Trump?
When crossings escalated was there a plan?
How long did it take to implement that plan?
How many layers are there between boots in the detention center and Carla?
Is there suppose to be a watchdog overseer in the agency? (All I can compare it to is my retail experience when Dist. Mgrs. would conduct surprise visits. And we worked liked hell when the regional or home office bigwigs were to come through)
Trump and Co. created this situation to be a deterrent.
How is it suppose to be a deterrent when the people coming don’t know what the conditions are like?
Did the Trump maladministration folks talk to the gov’ts of the Northern Triangle Countries?
Did the US do messaging campaign in those countries to show how people would be treated once they arrived?
When the numbers didn’t go down as they wanted what did they do to correct the situation?
Who from the Trump maladministration was on the ground making sure that the plan of cruelty was being carried out to Trump’s standards? ( I know that humiliation and degradation of brown people is feast of which Trump likes sup on so this would be like porn to him)
And since CBP has a union I guess it doesn’t act like any union that ever read about, how they making sure their members are working is safe conditions?
After reading this piece, which was absolutely superb, btw, i’m finding it very difficult to finish eating my lunch. People who know right from wrong are completely powerless to choose right from wrong. I’d really like to read an analysis of this entire debacle from the POV of a WWII Japanese internment camp survivor. It seems to me that the only difference is that the Japanese Americans were already here in the land of the free, and the home of the brave. The immigrants in the concentration camps today still yearn to be free.
…he earns about $100,000 a year, including overtime and holiday pay. He has a top-of-the-line health insurance plan that,…
Sadly, at the same time, high-quality daycare staff (often w/ degrees in child development or such), make minimum wage, no retirement, minimal health plans.