A long but worthwhile read. Sadly, our mistake-in-chief encourages these kind of abhorrent beliefs into action by those who harbor the same degree of racism and hate as he spews. Especially troubling when it is LEO. Only the best... “Dirtbag,” “Savages,” “Subhuman”: A Border Agent’s Hateful Career and the Crime That Finally Ended It Border Patrol agent Matthew Bowen had been investigated for years before he used his 4,000-pound truck to assault a fleeing migrant. by A.C. Thompson Aug. 16, 5 a.m. EDT It was late November 2017, and Matthew Bowen, a veteran Border Patrol agent, was seething. A fellow Border Patrol agent in Texas had just been found dead in the field, and Bowen was certain someone who’d been crossing the border illegally was responsible for murdering him. “Snuffed out by some dirtbag,” Bowen, stationed in Nogales, Arizona, said in a text later obtained by federal authorities. Bowen, if lacking in evidence, wasn’t alone in his anger and suspicion. President Donald Trump, nearing the end of his first year in office and already frustrated in his bid to construct a wall on the southern border, had promised to “seek out and bring to justice those responsible” for the Texas agent’s death. Brandon Judd, the head of the union that represents Border Patrol agents, declared to Fox News and other media outlets that the Texas agent had been “ambushed.” Bowen’s work record suggested his distaste for the mix of migrants and drug traffickers crossing the border illegally could be dangerous. He’d been the subject of multiple internal investigations over excessive force during his 10-year career, court records show. In one, he’d been accused of giving a handcuffed suspect what agents called a “rough ride,” slamming the brakes on his all-terrain vehicle in a way that flung the suspect into the ground. Bowen, though, had stayed on the job. And with the news of the Texas agent’s death, his disgust for illegal border-crossers seemed only to have deepened. “Mindless murdering savages,” he texted to another agent that November. Two weeks later, Bowen climbed behind the wheel of a Border Patrol pickup truck and used it to strike a Guatemalan migrant in a dusty parking lot in southern Arizona. Bowen eventually was arrested by federal authorities in May 2018 and charged with using his Ford F-150 pickup, a 4,000-pound vehicle, to menace the man as he tried to flee Bowen and other agents on foot. The truck, according to an affidavit filed by prosecutors in court, hit the man twice and came within inches of running him over. Prosecutors accused Bowen of using “deadly force against a person who was running away from him and posed no threat.” On Monday, after months of legal wrangling and on the eve of trial, Bowen pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor civil rights charge, an offense that carries a potential term of up to a year in jail. In his plea deal, Bowen admitted to hitting the man with his truck and promised to resign from the Border Patrol. Sentencing has been set for October. Bowen’s arrest and a variety of his ugly texts concerning migrants and others crossing the border illegally have been widely reported in recent months. But court documents and interviews suggest that his checkered career speaks to a much broader problem in the Border Patrol: its inability or unwillingness to identify and discipline problem agents. The case against Bowen comes amid increasing scrutiny of an agency that critics and insiders say is permeated by a culture of contempt for migrants. This year, ProPublica exposed the existence of a secret Facebook group in which agents engaged in cruel and dehumanizing discussions about people coming into the U.S. unlawfully. ProPublica has also detailed the failures by the agency to fully reform what critics inside and outside the Border Patrol have deemed a failed system of discipline for troubled agents. Bowen’s attack on the Guatemalan migrant was at least the sixth time he had been accused of using excessive force during his decade with the agency. None of the previous episodes resulted in any discipline beyond an “oral admonishment.” Unlike many police departments, the Border Patrol has no early intervention program for troubled agents, measures that would have triggered additional training or a deeper inquiry into Bowen’s behavior and mindset even if his conduct did not warrant formal discipline. At least two supervisors with direct knowledge of Bowen’s work history said they regarded him as a danger but were resigned to the fact that the agency was unlikely to ever punish or even fire him. “Other law enforcement agencies would’ve weeded him out,” said one of those who supervised Bowen. “Other law enforcement agencies have much higher standards than we do.” Bowen’s attorney, Sean Chapman, had sought to keep his record of complaints from being introduced at trial. The lawyer had also asked a judge to bar all or most of his text messages from being made known to any eventual jury. Faced with having to explain the texts, Chapman had said in court filings that the conversations were not unusual, but instead “commonplace” in the part of Arizona where Bowen worked. The texts, the lawyer argued in one filing last spring, are “part of the agency’s culture.” If true, it’s a remarkable claim, for the messages Bowen traded over the years with colleagues are openly hateful. In one, he said the men, women and children attempting to cross into the U.S. were “disgusting subhuman **** unworthy of being kindling in a fire.” In another, he joked about how tasty Guatemalan migrants can be if they are properly “fried” through the use of Tasers. In yet another, Bowen trained his anger on his own agency, calling it a “****ing failed agency” where he and other agents “are treated like ****, prosecuted for doing what it takes to arrest these savages, and not given appropriate resources to fully do our job.” In texts Bowen sent after he assaulted the migrant, he referred to the victim as a “guat” and dismissed the incident as all but a nonevent, suggesting the only reason it had resulted in any action was because it was caught on a camera belonging to the patrol’s parent organization, Customs and Border Protection. ... Much more at the link. For those who don't read on, the guy pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor civil rights charge. For hitting another human being with his truck. Oh, and the dead agent? Tripped and fell into a culvert. Not murdered.
I can't see the tweet but I assume it laments the Trump administration using $3.6 billion of defense budget funds for wall construction on the southern border? I think considerable sums of the $600 - 800 billion annual defense budget are totally wasted so $3.6 billion for some border wall is ok with me.
It does call into question why we budget so much in the first place... It isn't really a question, but we'll just keep voting in one party that like bigger government, and another that likes bigger military. Together, they'll trade spending to each other.
It's a total racket. Massive companies and bureaucracies just guzzling down tax payer dollars and what do we really get out of it? I mean, the defense budget is just obscenely high. End the wars, severely curtail our military presence abroad and dismantle the military industrial complex. Spend that money on worthwhile endeavors instead of providing a security blanket to half the globe and preparing to fight wars against non-existent threats.
Trump administration raids military construction projects for border wall https://www.politico.com/story/2019...aid-military-projects-for-border-wall-1479981 Of course, the effort also tries to sneak around House resistance to fund the wall... by then wanting congress to backfund the projects that the vanity wall funding is taking from...
Yea, I have no problem with the strategic use of fencing/wall/physical barriers at the southern border. That's been going on for decades. I don't think it needs to be every foot of the border from San Diego to Brownsville but like I said, strategically placed, it seems to be a good way to prevent illegal entries.
For trump's vanity wall... you know, the one Mexico was paying for. Pentagon pulls funds for military schools, daycare to pay for Trump's border wall https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...pay-for-trumps-border-wall-idUSKCN1VP2VY?il=0
Hey, but its not called the trump West Point engineering center. So the money instead goes to trump's vanity wall...
Too him maybe but not a lot of others that money could be well spent helping out with infrastructure ,schools,waterways and bridges.
Defending the border is important... physical barriers included... the President has a duty to protect our nation's border integrity. Especially amid a crisis where people are forcing their way in. Anything less is treason. While dems trumpet plans to relax things they only push people further toward the man with a plan.
What does any of that have to do with a wall? if it was that important for security why did the republicans not find it when they had the power?
Dems and Republicans have been erecting walls for many decades to protect the border. Your first question is silly. As for the GOP there are never Trumper neocons, so that is why things didn't progress. Trump is delivering on his madate from the ballot box to build the wall; hate it or love it he will follow through.
