Tom Homan: Border Patrol will do its job as Dems lob smears and shirk doing theirs

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Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan praises work of Border Patrol agents, says bad apples must be addressed

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan says men and women on the border have been doing an incredible job with limited resources, denies claims that detained migrants were forced to drink from toilets.

I have spent more than 34 years enforcing immigration laws, and it all began in 1984 as a Border Patrol agent. Every Border Patrol agent will remember their class number until the day they die -- mine being Border Patrol Class 167.

The Border Patrol has a very proud tradition with one of the toughest training academies in law enforcement. Not only do you have to learn Constitutional Law and a very complex Immigration and Naturalization Law, but you also have to learn all the things that will make you a premier federal law enforcement officer: high-speed driving, search and arrest techniques, firearms proficiency, and self-defense. On top of all that, you have to learn to speak and understand the Spanish language.

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I remember that my class started with 50 young men and women; we graduated a little more than half.

As I said, it’s a tough academy both mentally and physically. Wearing that uniform and knowing what you have endured and what you do every day for this nation makes the Border Patrol a very proud organization.

While the officer comradery is unmatched in any other law enforcement agency, there is the question ... at what point is that spirit broken for some? At what point do the countless and baseless attacks by the media and those in Congress comparing your proud tradition to Nazis affect you in such a way that you have to fight back and lose the professional demeanor that has been instilled in you by an honored tradition?

Based on the stories in the media this week about alleged inappropriate Facebook posts, alleged disrespectful attitudes towards members of Congress, alleged mistreatment of illegal immmigrants in their custody, I agree that something must be done.

While all this will surely be investigated, I am confident that the honor and integrity of the Border Patrol will shine. Because frankly, I think most of these stories are false.

While a few may have acted inappropriately on Facebook, that will not distract us from the vast majority that continues to put their own lives on the line every day and defend this country day in and day out. 

However, unlike Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, and countless others, we will not judge anyone until the investigation is complete. We are not going to demand people get fired and leadership be replaced based on unsubstantiated allegations. In this country, you have the right to innocence until proven guilty -- unless, of course, you work for the current administration, and you are deemed guilty out of mere association.

Here is the lesson I would like to teach every Border Patrol agent: None of you have the right to degrade or insult another. You have to be an elected politician and a member of Congress to do that.

None of you have the right to call any Congressperson a bad name. You are not allowed to call them thugs, Nazis, racists, or white supremacists. You can only do that if you are an elected politician or member of Congress.

You don’t have the right to ask people to harass anyone and their family at their homes, at church, at restaurants or in the general public. Again, you have to be a member of Congress to do that.

You don’t have the right to accuse anyone of horrendous behavior, especially when it’s not true and based only on political hatred. You have to be a politician to do that.

Your family isn’t allowed to be proud of the fact that you chose a life of service to your country. You are not allowed to enforce the law because doing so will make you a racist. You are not allowed to perform the duties that you took an oath to perform because enforcing the law is sometimes uncomfortable.

And here is a big one: you are not allowed to use facilities that were approved, funded, built and utilized under the Obama administration to detain illegal aliens’ children and families. You have to accept the fact that these facilities magically appeared after President Trump took office.

Here’s what you do have the right to do: work incredible amounts of overtime for no money; deal with sick and contagious illegal immigrants every day and take that sickness home to your family; accept being smeared by members of Congress and the media each and every day -- like the recent New York Times Op-Ed that said Border Patrol agents and their families should be bullied and shamed in public.

Let’s recap. You cannot call anyone the Gestapo. Only Democratic Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., can do that. You can’t compare anyone to the KKK. Only Kamala Harris can do that. You are not allowed to accuse anyone of being a Nazi and running concentration camps. Only Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and lhan Omar, D-Minn., can do that. You are not allowed to tell the public to go out and intentionally harass anyone. Only Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., can do that. You are not allowed to call anyone thugs and accuse them of consistently violating the law. Only New York Governor Cuomo can do that.

I can go on and on and on with examples, but I think I’ve made my point.

The men and women of the Border Patrol and ICE cannot play by the same rules Congress does because they have no rules. They can say and do whatever they want in their drive to resist our president and obtain open borders.

Their failures to secure our border and close the loopholes that caused this surge will be blamed on the men and women who risk their lives every day. Their failure to quickly fund DHS and HHS so families and children could be put in more appropriate facilities will be blamed on law enforcement even though these same law enforcement groups have been asking them for relief funding for months.

A number of Democratic presidential nominees stood outside a child facility in Florida and talked about the horrendous conditions that children separated from their parents are forced to endure -- even though those politicians never entered the facility.

They also failed to mention that this facility contains children who were separated by their parents long ago. The parents and sponsors hired a criminal organization to smuggle that child in a car trunk or in the back of a tractor-trailer -- and we the government are being called inhumane?

Instead of accepting the fact that President Trump was right about the caravans, right about the surge, right about the crisis, right about the national emergency, they will spin history and blame the ones who wanted to fix it before it got too bad.

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Deflection is a political move, but America is smarter than that. Remember the term “manufactured crisis”? Nancy and Chuck used it many times along with most of the Democratic leadership and most of the media. I haven’t heard it in a while. I wonder why.

Congress’ failures to address this crisis before it got too bad cannot be ignored and all the finger-pointing, lies, and mistruths will not change that. Congress would rather abolish a federal law enforcement agency while vilifying and attacking law enforcement officers than do their job.