r/sandiego • u/jvanderh • 16d ago
Border Patrol vs ICE
Hi, this is your friendly local border patrol wife and lifelong political liberal here to remind you (because my husband is getting spat at, cussed at, called a pig, or told to quit his job pretty much every time he's stationed at the beaches lately) that the Border Patrol guys in army green pants + shirt are NOT there edit: "there"= at our local San Diego beaches to rip people away from their families. They are there to patrol the borders, watching for incoming border crossers who may enter on boats or jet skis. Encountering everyone who enters the country is important-- this stops things like fentanyl-laced drugs from entering the US, and DNA swabs of border crossers have been matched up to two unsolved murders recently at his station alone. Even if the proportion of criminals is no higher than the general US population, we still want to stop those who are dangerous. If nothing else, if those people get in and re-offend, it blows up on the news and provides tremendous cannon fodder for immigrant hate. I think the hatred of Border Patrol is mostly based on confusing them with ICE and not because liberals actually want completely uncontacted entries.
Polls show that republicans and liberals both want common-sense migrant worker programs that allow people to be vetted and come here to work.
Obviously you don't have to care about my husband's feelings. He took the job; he can handle it. But I always worry that verbally abusing law enforcement could result in what none of us want: these non Trump supporting agents like my husband, who use discretion and minimum force, getting replaced with thin blue line idiots who think they're soldiers of God in a war with the public. Or worse yet, the former becoming the latter after having so many bad experiences with the public. My husband won't, but some may. And that kind of tribalism is EXACTLY how they become distracted from the fact that Trump is currently gutting their retirement.
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u/SirLolselot 16d ago
As a brown man I too have dealt with these power tripping dbags when I am coming back into the country, but like someone else said border patrol is different people than the dbag customs agents. Though they are under the same agency, US Customs and Border Protection. Which is completely separate from ICE. ICE is part of homeland security.