Breitbart: New Data Challenge Left’s ‘Lawless’ Border Patrol Conspiracy Theory

December 31, 2016

By Lana Shadwick

Open-borders, pro-amnesty advocates have been waging a war on the legitimacy of the Border Patrol for years, but responses to government document requests on charge and conviction rates among agents show actual corruption levels do not match the critical rhetoric.

A D.C. legal foundation advocating for tougher immigration enforcement has obtained information that challenges a leftist narrative that the men and women patrolling our border are engaged in rampant corruption.

Information obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) going back to 2005 shows that suspicions of systemic criminality at the agency is not supported by data.

In response to IRLI’s public records request which asked for “Any and all original records showing the number of convictions and/or charges, alleged, and/or filed, related to or associated with any type of smuggling, bribery, bribe-taking, conspiracy, unauthorized access to DHS databases, and/or corruption involving Customs officials and/or Border Patrol agents,” shows that 159 charges and convictions have been brought against CBP officials since 2005. Considering the staff count of the agency is over 60,000, the ratio of staff to criminal activity is extremely low.

Commenting on the data, IRLI’s Executive Director and General Counsel Dale Wilcox said, “Just like the War on Cops, the Left has been trying to claim for years that our Border Patrol agents are corrupt, violent, and generally actually lawless. Our FOIA findings, however, severely dent this narrative.”

Wilcox commented further, “Like other critics, however, the open-borders groups that make such public allegations never give actual corruption data, such as the charge and/or conviction rates for CBP-wide employees or comparisons with other federal agencies, et cetera. Now we see why.” … Read the full story by Lana Shadwick.