The Daily - A Conversation With a Border Patrol Agent

Episode Date: September 24, 2019

President Trump vowed to crack down on undocumented immigration and empower the Border Patrol. Three years later, the agency is the target of outrage, protest and investigation into its mission and conduct, and many of the agents who have supported Mr. Trump say that morale is low. We spoke with one of them. Guest: Art Del Cueto, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona and vice president of the National Border Patrol Council. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Overwhelmed by desperate migrants and criticized for mistreating those in their care, many agents, whose work has long been viewed as a ticket to the middle class, have grown frustrated and bitter.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Every day I'm president, we will track down the gang members, drug dealers, child predators, and criminal aliens that we find. We will get them, we will throw them the hell out of our country, or put them in jail. out of our country or put them in jail. One of the outcomes of Donald Trump's vow to crack down on undocumented immigration was that he would empower the country's border patrol agents

in a way they had never been before. The border patrol agents, 16,500 border patrol agents endorsed Donald Trump. They know what's going on. Prompting their union to issue its first ever endorsement of a presidential candidate. And their job is much easier now than when they're with me.

Because when they're with me, they're going to be working hard. But three years later... Grab him! Grab him! Border Patrol agents are the subject of outrage, protest, and investigation over their mission and conduct in the Trump era. This is not something that's okay in America today.

We have a right to be here. They have a right to be here. Now, many of those same agents who endorsed Trump are telling our colleagues at The Times that morale is at an all-time low. Today, we speak with one of them. It's Tuesday, September 24th. Hello? Hey, Art, it's Michael Barbaro from the New York Times. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good.

So where am I physically reaching you now? I'm in Tucson, Arizona. And are you at work? Are you at the office? No, I took a vacation day today. Unfortunately, because of my position with the union, even when I take days off, they're not really days off. Art Del Cueto is a Border Patrol agent in Arizona and vice president of the National Border Patrol Council. The reason I'm able to talk to you is because under my union hat, I can talk to different media and stuff like that.

Whereas a regular Border Patrol agent, he'd have to get approval from the agency themselves. They'll say, you need to speak to the public information officer. When you do that, you will get the complete cookie cutter response to any questions that you would ask. So today there's no cookie cutter conversation? No, you're not going to get the dog and pony show with me. No cookie-cutter conversation. No. You're not going to get the dog and pony show with me.

I'm really curious to hear how the work of being and representing Border Patrol agents has changed in recent years. I feel like you're uniquely positioned to speak to that. But I want to hear more about how and why you came to do what you do. I grew up in Arizona. I grew up in a small border town south of Arizona called Douglas, Arizona. And the best way I can describe it is, you know, the old 80s movies where the stranger comes into town and before he even hits the center of town, everyone in the town already knows there's a stranger in town. Right. And that's pretty much the way Douglas was growing up. Unfortunately, because of its proximity with the border, some people don't like to talk about it. And sometimes they say what happens in Douglas

stays in Douglas. But the reality is there was a huge criminal element in Douglas because of the cartels and drugs were very, very accessible to a lot of people in the town. Border towns are rough. It's as rough as what you see in the movies. I think I was in sixth grade the first time I saw heroin. I grew up here. I've seen it my entire life. I know how bad it is with the drugs coming into the United States. How did your family end up in Douglas and this close to the border?

What did your parents do? My dad was a doctor. My dad was a physician. He worked in the United States. And then he opened up a private practice in Mexico. And my mom is originally from Mexico, and I have a lot of family down there still. I don't like to get into it because, obviously, because of what I do and how easily my name is out, I don't want to really get into how much family I have because I don't want them to have to face any issues in Mexico themselves.

You mean the kind of repercussions of the fact that you do what you do? Correct. But your parents came here legally? Yes, sir. Yes. That they did. Do you remember how your parents talked about immigration when you were growing up as people who came to the U.S. legally? No, I don't think there was ever really any talk about that. You know, I remember growing up, my dad would always instill in me and my sister

to make sure that we respected the laws of this country. He always made sure that we respected the United States and, you know, the red, white, and blue. We never had any other country's flag fly in my home. My dad was always about the United States. We never had any other country's flag fly in my home. My dad was always about the United States. It sounds like your parents became very patriotic. Yeah, I mean, my dad would always talk about it, you know,

respect law enforcement, respect this country. This is the country that's giving us everything. If the countries that we came from were better, my dad would say we would still be there. But obviously we're here, so you have to have allegiance to the country that has opened their arms to you. Is being Mexican part of your identity in your mind, given that's where your parents came from? I think it's my heritage. I definitely believe it's, you know, it's heritage. And I don't, I'm not going to sit here because I get attacked by the people that are from Mexico that live in the United States.

Because I do public speaking sometimes and I get protesters there and they call me a sellout. They call me a race traitor. And I sit there and I just look at them and I say, well, if I'm a race traitor because I'm proud to be an American. And you're from America, but you're not proud to be here. What does that make you? You know? I mean, I listen to Mexican music. I speak Spanish.

I make sure that my kids were bilingual and they're able to speak Spanish. I'm proud of my Hispanic heritage. My citizenship is American. My race has nothing to do with being an American. So how did it happen that you actually became a Border Patrol agent? Oh man,

I grew up around the Border Patrol my whole life, so I saw them my entire life. And I remember as a kid, always loving old westerns. A fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty high-o silver. The Lone Ranger.

You know, the Lone Ranger. Do you think Clem and Judd killed Hamlet? Yes, I'm practically certain. Just movies where, you know, the good guy is wearing the white hat, the good guy is always the guy wearing the badge. There's only one way we can make a case stand up against them in court. How? We must catch them with the evidence.

I need the cooperation of the law. Hurry. So you know as a kid you watch Border Patrol agents and for the longest time part of that uniform was wearing that cowboy hat. So I always wanted to get into some type of law enforcement. I applied for the Border Patrol and I was contacted within a year. I was given a choice of what stations to go to. I believe at the time they gave me two different choices. I picked the one that made more sense to me, which was still in Arizona. And what year was it?

2003. And so this would have been under President Bush, George W. Bush. Correct. Yeah, under President Bush. And what was the job like at the time? I mean, what can I say? When you first start, you really don't know what the heck you're doing. And I remember going to the academy and we do different scenarios where you arrest two individuals. You know, they tell you, hey, make sure you keep them on this side of you and they don't move over to this side. But nothing's going to prepare you for when you're out there in the field by yourself and you catch a group of 80, which is a little bit bigger than the group of

two that I was trained with, right? And then you're having to entertain a group of 80 and making sure that a group of 80 individuals listen to you while at the same time, you're trying to get a hold of transportation on the radio, knowing fully well that they're more than likely are close to an hour away from you. And, you know, a lot of times you're out there on your own. I mean, to this day, you're checking certain trails and you start following these footprints, trying to catch the group. And by the time you catch the group, you're going to encounter many times a very large group. That's the reality. Sometimes it drives me crazy when people think that agents are evil. I remember catching a large group and yelling at them, you know, to sit down because they wouldn't sit down.

Later on, they were saying that they were going to complain because I yelled at them. they were saying that they were going to complain because I yelled at them. And I'm thinking, I'm by myself. There's close to 80 of them. And you're upset because I yelled at you? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense to me. And the people you would encounter back in the early days of your job, what was the most common reason that they were crossing, would you say? They would say they were crossing because they wanted to get a job in the United States. It was monetary. So what happened once you encountered them?

Well, you would detain them. You would ask them, obviously, different questions. You'd take them to the processing center. You'd run their fingerprints and see if they have any priors within the United States. You would put them in a cell, and you'd wait for the next bus that would take them back to Mexico. And did that change over time? They came up with different ways to detain people, you know, streamlining. And then they came up with repatriations where they would send them further into the interior of Mexico. It just kept on changing. But, I mean, at some point when you're catching the same individual 17, 20 times,

something's not working, right? And what would you say was not working? Just catching them and sending them back over, catching them and sending them back over. I mean, there was times when I'd catch the same individual three or four times a week. They would just keep returning. Yes. There's just too many loopholes in the system, I think. You know, where you come into the United States and you're asking for asylum, but the immigration judges are swamped.

So instead of what they do is they say, hey, I'm going to give you a date so I can see and listen to your asylum claim. But because you crossed with a child, I can't detain him for more than 20 days. So I'm just going to let you go and trust that you will show up to your immigration hearing. But to me, that's just a loophole that they can expose, you know, and just not bother showing up. I mean, we see it. And I think that's a problem. It's the system of catch and release, right, that the Trump administration has complained about a lot and says has left them with no choice but to implement tougher policies that they hope will discourage people from coming. Right.

Encourage people from coming. Right. So let's talk about what's changed with the arrival of President Trump as president and obviously your boss. What do you remember the conversation among your fellow Border Patrol agents being like after Trump had been elected? What was the sense that things are about to change? Yeah, I mean, definitely right off the bat, agents, they were happy about it. They said, we have somebody that's of our nation that gets it. And when President Trump first took over office, he single-handedly, just with the rhetoric alone, lowered the numbers of individuals that were crossing into the country illegally. That was a huge change. That was huge. It's a

big deal. Because the message was going out from the president that this is not worth it. We're not going to put up with it anymore. Yeah, we're not going to put up with it anymore. We can't just allow everyone to come in. We're not going to just allow lawlessness on our nation's borders. And that rhetoric lowered the numbers. And what about the policy changes from the Trump administration that include the best known of them, which is zero tolerance and at the border, the decision to separate families? I think where some of the issues were that people think there

was a separation was we were more strict on who was with their parents and who wasn't. Because a lot of times when we arrest these individuals, they cross with minors. And I'll give you examples. There's times that I've arrested individuals that have a minor with them. And then I asked the minor, hey, what's his relation to you? If they stutter or they look nervous and they don't tell me the truth, while I'm doing my field investigation, I will put the parent or the individual that's an adult and I'll separate them from that minor. And I will ask that minor in the Spanish language, hey, tell me the truth. Who is this individual? So you saw a virtue in separating children from adults because you couldn't be certain who those adults were. But we know now that those cases involved the separation of mothers and children, fathers and children, not just unaccompanied minors with non-relatives, correct?

I don't know. I'd have to look at the statistics. So I can't tell you a certain answer of, yeah, I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I don't know. I really don't have that answer. Our Times reporting suggests that that's not in dispute. It's become a well-known fact. Mm-hmm. How do you feel about what happened, about those changes in policies? Do you think it was the right decision? What happened about those changes in policies? Do you think it was the right decision? Put it this way, as an American citizen, if you break the law in the United States

and you have a child with you, you will be separated from that child because you broke the law. You know, and I mean, that's what it comes down to. I would hope that as individuals, we care enough about our family member to not commit that crime. That way, we're not separated from our family members.

It sounds like you think that given the loopholes, this was the right decision to separate children. I didn't say there was a right to separate children. I said it's right to show individuals that there's consequences for committing crimes. I mean, I ask that because there have been loopholes in the past and there have been White Houses and presidents frustrated with these loopholes, but they haven't gone to the lengths of this administration, especially when it comes to family separation. They haven't done that. But I don't think there's a lot of the things in the past have worked. That's where we're at the problem that we're at now. We'll be right back.

Customs and Border Patrol agents are pushing back against criticism after a government watchdog report showed how detention facilities along the southern border are in turmoil. There are, and I'm just quoting now from the newspaper, outbreaks of scabies, shingles and chicken pox. And I'm quoting now from the paper, the stench of the children's dirty clothing was so strong that it spread to the agent's own clothing. People in town would scrunch their noses when they left work. Outrage at the border tonight over the death of a seven-year-old girl. She and her father were picked up by Border Patrol in New Mexico after crossing illegally.

She died in their custody. We continue to face tragedies at the border, particularly with regard to the safety of children. CBS News has confirmed that a six-migrant child is known to have died after crossing into the U.S. At this point, with kids that have died, 5,000 separated from their families, I feel like — and the evidence is really clear — that this is intentional. It's intentional. It's a policy choice being made on purpose by this administration, and it's cruel and inhumane.

That's an appalling accusation, and our men and women fight hard to protect people in our custody every single day. The agency spent Monday addressing another crisis after the investigative team at ProPublica revealed the existence of a private Facebook group made up of almost 10,000 former and current Border Patrol agents, which features derogatory and insulting posts, including those of migrants and at least one of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. Let me ask this question. The Times, my colleagues, we have been reporting on morale among Border Patrol agents. What my colleagues have found is that it's fallen. It's gotten lower. I wonder why you think that is.

I don't think that the morale is where it should be. I think it could be better. But I think a lot of it is it doesn't fall because of President Trump by no means. Why has it fallen then? Because it's a president that tries to enforce the immigration laws. And every time he's tried to do something, we have other people that jump in and they call it a racist. And then you have different congressional leaders that are going to our detention facilities.

And, you know, they're calling for the disbanding of some of our law enforcement entities like ICE, like CBP. I mean, that alone is demoralizing. It sounds like you watch that very closely. You have to. I mean, I represent agents that are working at these centers. And when there's any individual that's going to enter these centers and walk out of there and actually say lies, I have to watch that because these agents just can't talk about it because, you know, they're bound because of the agency. I'm the voice that has to come out and say these people are lying. When you say lying, I'm thinking, for example, about a congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who visits a detention center and says she speaks to a woman. And that woman says that she was told to drink water from a toilet.

That's what that woman told Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. I mean, so I guess the question would be, are those the things that you think of as being statements made by lawmakers that are untrue? There are untrue. It's not true. Have you been to those detention centers? Yes, I have. And what's your sense of what's happening there? There's individuals that are being detained in these centers until there can be a determination of what their status is going to be. There is food there. They immediately have medical assistance there. There's water there.

There's running toilets. But are you saying there's additional jugs of water that are put there for these individuals so they can drink water? You're saying there's no way that the congresswoman may have been told the thing she was told? Or you're saying you don't think that's representative of the overall experience? I still don't know who it is that told me that. Are you at all troubled by some of the conditions at these detention facilities? Of course I am. I'm troubled that there is a huge number of individuals that are being detained in these areas that are not designed to hold the vast amount of these people that are coming across.

Because it creates not just an unsafe environment for the individual, right, that's being detained there, but it creates an unsafe environment for the agents that work at these facilities. So you're saying it's bad for everybody? It is. It's bad for everybody. And what are you hearing from the agents you represent about their experiences? Are they telling you that they are demoralized by all this? You know, you don't just walk in there and they say, hey, we're demoralized. No, I mean, you ask them, how's it going? How are you doing? And they tell you, man, this is crazy, Art. It's like nonstop. We haven't stopped. It's just insane. We have groups after groups. We're tired. You know, I mean, you just see it.

But it sounds like there's a lot on their minds. There's a lot going on all the time. You hear stories of a lot of agents that continuously tell their kids, don't tell your friends or don't tell anyone at school what your mom or dad does for a living. You have to go home and you have to wear a cover shirt, or you have to make sure that you take your uniform off because you're looked at in a bad way. that you take your uniform off because you're looked at in a bad way. Here you have men and women that joined law enforcement to protect the citizens of this country, but you have way too many individuals that are judging them, calling them Nazis, baby killers, the KKK. I mean, you name it. It's just beyond ridiculous.

Do you feel that the positive aspects of having a president you feel understands the unique challenges of being a border agent? Do those outweigh all the negative attitudes and public perceptions that now come with being a border agent in 2019? I definitely believe it does. Because at the end of the day, we have someone that cares and someone that understands. And I think, like, we started this conversation about my Hispanic heritage, but my allegiance is my loyalty is the United States of America, right? I think that's the beauty of this president, that he's willing to work with other countries, but at the end of the day, his allegiance is with the United States.

Art, when you see something happen, like that private Facebook group where agents wrote what they wrote and said what they said about undocumented immigrants, these really derogatory things. Correct. Are you disappointed by those kinds of actions? Because they feed into this narrative. about undocumented immigrants. He's really derogatory things. Correct. Are you disappointed by those kinds of actions? Because they feed into this narrative

that Americans have about your colleagues. I'm very disappointed. And, you know, it's horrible because obviously there was, what they said, 9,500 people that were part of that page. Yeah, a lot of people. Right. But it's frustrating because I believe that there's certain members of the

media and certain member that are elected officials have really pushed that narrative based on individuals that commented out of a, over 17,000 man agency. I don't condone any of that from the national board for council. We have pointed out the issues with such Facebook page for quite some time. I myself went to various stations and spoke to the agents

about the dangers of posting in social media and such pages. So you understood this was happening and that it could be a problem? Definitely. Yes. I attacked it numerous times. But people did it anyway. Obviously.

So you don't think it's representative of the agents that you work with? It's not even close to a representation of the individuals. So I can tell you're getting out of your car and you're ready to go. There are a lot of Americans listening who may have never heard from somebody who spent so many years at a Border Patrol agent and believed so strongly in what this work means. So what do you want them to understand that you think that they don't understand? I think the biggest thing is that they can't be painting agents with this broad stroke because they hear something in the news media about one agent or two agents doing something wrong. We're enforcing our nation's laws. It has nothing to do with race.

It has nothing to do with one particular president. I think at the end of the day, whether you're sitting on the left of the aisle or the right of the aisle, when you go to bed at night, you lock your front door because you expect to be secure in your home. We'd need the same thing for our nation's borders, regardless of what side of the aisle you stand. Well, Art, I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. All right, buddy. Take care. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

Did you tell the Ukrainian leader that they would have the aid only if they investigated Joe Biden and his family? No, I didn't. No, I didn't. On Monday, President Trump denied that he had offered military aid to the president of Ukraine on the condition that Ukraine launch an investigation into Joe Biden and his son. I did not make a statement that you have to do this or I'm not going to give you aid. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that.

Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian president, which is the subject of a whistleblower's complaint, occurred as the Trump administration was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military funds to Ukraine. As calls for a new investigation into Trump mounted, the president took to Twitter to challenge the patriotism of the whistleblower, who is a member of the intelligence community. The president wrote, quote, Who is this so-called whistleblower who doesn't know the correct facts?

Is he on our country's side? And. This is all wrong. the correct facts. Is he on our countryside? And... This is all wrong. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you? Days after youth protests erupted across the world, a major summit on climate began at the United Nations with an impassioned warning from the teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who had called for the demonstrations. You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal.

The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. During the U.N. session, President Trump, a climate change skeptic, unexpectedly appeared in the General Assembly Hall. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken leader on fighting climate change, addressed Trump directly. Let me thank President Trump for coming today to the United Nations. Hopefully our discussions here will be useful for you when you formulate climate policy.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.