AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas congressman whose district runs along 800 miles of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico boundary lambasted a federal government official who claimed that the border crisis was not causing Border Patrol agents to commit suicide at rising rates.
Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales said U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Suicidologist Dr. Kent Corso’s conclusion that non-work issues were the top reasons for the uptick in deaths among federal law enforcement was false.
BORDER CRISIS NOT TO BLAME FOR RISE IN CBP SUICIDES
“He’s wrong. I don’t think it takes a doctor to realize or a brain surgeon to realize 14 suicides is 14 too many, as well as there is something wrong within the organization,” Gonzales told the Washington Examiner in a phone interview.
Gonzales, who spent 20 years in the military and was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, said the military faced a similar spike in suicides among personnel during the war on terror.
“During that time, if you ask [the Department of Defense], they would say to you, ‘No, everything’s under control, we’re doing X, Y, or Z.’ Well, clearly whatever they were doing wasn’t working,” Gonzales added.
This calendar year, 14 CBP employees have taken their own lives, including eight Border Patrol agents. The three most recent deaths took place in a 15-day span in November.
Corso told the Washington Examiner in an interview last week that agents “do talk about the border conditions decreasing their morale, but in no way is that the cause of suicide.”
Gonzales and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) from the neighboring border district held a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday to draw attention to the 14 suicides year to date, as well as an agent who died in the line of duty overnight.
Gonzales announced a forthcoming bipartisan bill called the Taking Action to Prevent Suicides (TAPS) Act, intended to unite lawmakers to solve this problem.
In a conversation Tuesday evening, Gonzales told the Washington Examiner that the bill will create a model for how the Department of Defense had created a task force to respond to the spike in suicides during the wars.
“Unfortunately this is not a new issue. Between 2007 … through November 30 of 2022, there been 149 suicides within the [CBP] agency,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) said at the press conference.
In an attempt to share what agents and officers experience at work, Gonzales spoke of a Border Patrol agent who had been detailed temporarily to the Del Rio region in Texas, and had been one of the first agents at the Uvalde elementary school shooting.
“He went into the room and … was surrounded by all this death and he has had to deal with that every single day from that point on,” said Gonzales. “And this agent is still working and this agent is still doing his job, but these things that they are seeing, what they are exposed to 100% has an impact on you.”
Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX), who is married to a Border Patrol agent, said federal agents “feel abandoned” by the Biden administration.
“I’m asking the Biden administration — I’m asking to please take this issue serious,” Flores said. “It is not just a statistic. Families are forever changed. I have lost — we have lost Border Patrol agents in the recent weeks that are friends. Just last night, we lost another friend. It has to stop.”
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Over the past two years, CBP’s Border Patrol, Air and Marine Operations, and Office of Field Operations have responded to more illegal immigrant encounters at the border under President Joe Biden than during any other period in U.S. history.
