Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan downplayed the rising number of arrests of border patrol agents and swatted away a suggestion from a reporter that a rotating door of department leaders has led to increased frustration among employees.
“What really frustrates them is the fact that when they’re out there, doing they’re job every single day, it’s the rhetoric that’s out there, the rhetoric that comes from the mainstream media, the rhetoric that comes from our congressional leaders,” Morgan said Thursday. “When they say stuff like they call them Nazis and they say that we’re making people drink from toilets or running concentration camps. That’s what gets them frustrated.”
During a White House press briefing, Morgan was asked about the skyrocketing number of border patrol agents placed under arrest. A reporter asked Morgan, who is President Trump’s fourth CBP chief, if he believed the constantly changing leadership was a drag on department moral.
“Whether someone is acting or not has no moment of whether they’re going to go out and be arrested,” Morgan responded.
A recent report from Quartz found CBP officers were arrested at a rate five times that of other law enforcement officials.
At the same time, a ballooning number of migrants flowing across the U.S. border with Mexico in recent years has increased scrutiny on American policing of the area.
Earlier this year, leading Democratic lawmakers condemned conditions at the immigration detention facilities after receiving tours. The agency came under further scrutiny when a closed Facebook group among agents where crude and racist messages were shared came to light.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went so far as to claim the Trump administration was running “concentration camps” at the southern border. She also claimed, without evidence, that CBP agents were abusing migrants held near the border, restricting their diets and hygiene, and forcing them to drink out of toilets.
Trump has said that he “likes acting” when it comes to heads of the various agencies under his administration.
“We’re trying to do the best we can,” Morgan said. “It’s really a resiliency problem.”
