A top Border Patrol official said Wednesday that he worries the head of his agency will pay a price politically for testifying honestly Congress.
“I will tell you right now that you have a chief patrol agent right now who has been very open and has given you all candor, and I fear that because of that openness, because of that candor, our current acting chief patrol agent is not even going to be considered for the [job of] permanent chief patrol agent because ‘he cannot be controlled,'” Brandon Judd, the head of the National Border Patrol Council, told a House subcommittee panel on Wednesday.
Judd testified alongside Acting Border Patrol Chief Ronald Vitiello, who said another surge of unaccompanied children is expected at the border this summer. Vitiello suggested that the coming border surge might involve more unaccompanied children than the numbers seen during the 2014 crisis.
“As of Jan. 31 this fiscal year, CBP has apprehended more than 20,000 [unaccompanied children], compared to approximately 10,000 apprehended during the same period last year,” Vitiello said in his prepared remarks. “As we enter the traditional season of higher migration, we are closely monitoring this situation and working with our partners to ensure that resources and capabilities are in place to accommodate an increased number of [unaccompanied children], and to maintain safe, orderly processing of children that CBP encounters, without disrupting CBP’s vital border security mission.”
Under questioning from lawmakers, the acting chief suggested that agents might be able to mitigate such crises if they were allowed to return immigrants from non-contiguous countries back to their home nations, as is the policy for immigrants from Mexico. “That would require a change in law as far as I know,” he said. “Certainly, in a relationship with Mexico, this is a smaller problem.”
Border Patrol chiefs are appointed by the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That job is currently held by Gil Kerlikowske, who was appointed to the position by President Obama in 2014.
