Politico published an article today which details the troubled history of the US Customs & Border Patrol. The article explains and documents that the current CBP crisis is the culmination of mismanagement and corruption going back to the agency's creation 16 years ago.
The article is a long read and pretty packed with details of agency scandals and mismanagement leading up to and into the Trump administration. I strongly recommend everyone take the time to read the whole article, but for those who aren't able to, I've quoted the two paragraphs that provide the best summation:
The article is a long read and pretty packed with details of agency scandals and mismanagement leading up to and into the Trump administration. I strongly recommend everyone take the time to read the whole article, but for those who aren't able to, I've quoted the two paragraphs that provide the best summation:
The problems underlying CPB's almost theatrical failures trace back to its creation amid the post-9/11 reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security and have been exacerbated by a long-standing failure of leadership that goes up to both Congress and the White House and has lasted through three administrations. Both the modern Border Patrol and its parent CBP have been plagued by poor leadership and management at all levels, and by recruiting challenges that have left them with a subpar, overstressed workforce and a long-running toxic culture. Most deeply, however, they are plagued today by a huge and unresolved mismatch between the agency's founding identity and its current mission.
Most Border Patrol agents serving today signed up for a tough job in a quasi-military agency protecting the country against terrorists and drug dealers. They've found themselves instead serving as a more mundane humanitarian agency—the nation's front-line greeter for families of migrants all too happy to surrender themselves after crossing the border. CPB doesn't have the culture to meet this challenge, nor does it have the manpower or support from the rest of government. The latest bad headlines have come even as the promises made by candidate Donald Trump to invest in the Border Patrol have not been fulfilled; far from an increase of thousands of agents, the agency is actually now smaller than it was under President Barack Obama. As one former Border Patrol union official told me, "Trump is not delivering."