Border Patrol had big role in protests
Refugio County Sheriff Raul “Pinky” Gonzales was worried. In the days after George Floyd’s death in Minnesota, protests were breaking out across the country — and many were turning violent.
A Black Lives Matter protest was set to take place in his South Texas county on June 6, and the small-town sheriff wasn’t about to let things go south.
“We had gotten word therewere going to besome activists coming in from Houston,” Gonzales said. “We didn’t know how many.”
The sheriff’s office called U.S. Customs and Border Protection and asked for help.
Gonzales was one of many police leaders who made such calls. Customs and Border Protection fielded requests from many of the nation’s largest police agencies during the
Floyd protests. It provided drones, helicopters or planes to 10 of the nation’s largest police departments or federal agencies around the country.
In Texas, documents obtained by the Chronicle show the agency coordinated with nearly a dozen Texas departments in response to planned protests against police brutality, and give the clearest picture yet of the agency’s interactions with police departments and law enforcement’s perception of the protests.
They also show the new role of Customs and Border Protection, which has seen supercharged growth and become the nation’s largest federal law enforcement agency.
Agents trained to work in isolated border regions targeting drug cartels and human smugglers are now being deployed to quell unrest in dense, urban cities far from the border, opposing on the streets U.S. citizens engaging in First Amendment-protected protests — deployments where critics and local leaders say Customs and Border Protection’s presence actually made the situation worse and more violent. The agency says it responds to requests of all kinds from law enforcement agencies around the country and that it is not restricted to border areas or duties associated with border protection.
When local agencies partner with Customs and Border Protection, critics say, the approach to rallies and protests is one of battle preparation rather than protecting people exercising their rights and those around them.
Grenade launchers
Among the documents are text records of Kingsville Police Chief Ricardo Torres, which include messages between the top cop of the South Texas town of 25,000 and Duke Canchola, the Border Patrol agent-in-charge of CBP’s Kingsville Station, discussing a planned June 2 Black Lives Matter and George Floyd Memorial rally.
Emails between the two agencies dated June 1 show Canchola offered the services of dozens of agents, including 10 day-shift agents and seven “riot-trained” members of a mobile response team. Customs and Border Protection said the department could have the use of a drone, mobile vehicle surveillance systems and a grenade launcher that could shoot projectiles filled with mace or pepper balls or handthrown grenades.
It also offered a slew of crowd control weapons, including FN-303s, less-than-lethal riot guns that other police departments have stopped using after officers accidentally killed protesters with them.
According to the Kingsville Record, the rally drew around 225 marchers and protesters. “Organized by recent graduates and students at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, the peaceful protest in Kingsville began at 1 p.m.,” the paper reported. After prayers and speeches, the gathering marched to the Kleberg County Courthouse and disbanded around 2:30 p.m.
Defenders of the agency say that such exchanges of assistance between law enforcement agencies are common. In natural disasters or other potential emergencies, “they tap anyone who carries a gun for the federal government,” said Gary Blankinship, former U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of Texas.
In a written statement, Customs and Border Protection officials said the agency responds to incidents across the country at the request of federal, state and local partners, including response to civil unrest and in support of the DHS Protecting American Communities Task Force, created in July to coordinate law enforcement agencies in protecting U.S. historic monuments, memorials, statues, and federal facilities.
Customs and Border Protection teams have assisted other agencies during mass shootings, manhunts for wanted fugitives, as well as for natural disasters and high-profile events such as presidential inaugurations and the Super Bowl, the agency said.
“Personnel deployed have specialized training for operations in chaotic environments such as the ones we have recently faced across the country,” the statement said.
Butwhen CBP sent its elite Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) unit to Portland, Ore., a site of heated unrest, members of the unit were filmed roaming the city confronting protesters and pulling some into unmarked vans — enraging demonstrators, who accused them of kidnapping.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said the agents’ actions put “both Oregonians and local law enforcement officers in harm’s way.”
Former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said that while the tactical unit had previously responded to civil unrest, the unit’s skill lay in tracking fugitives in deep wilderness. “I’d call it way beyond mission creep. I’d call it totally inappropriate and ineffective use (of CBP resources).”
Critics say the response from law enforcement is also troubling because it showed how Customs and Border Protection and local departments treating First Amendment-protected protests on the same level as potential acts of terrorism.
“When you have the deployment of such militarized agencies to First Amendment-protected protests, you’re going well beyond best police practices for crowd control,” said Shaw Drake, a policy specialist at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas’ Border Rights Center.
A ‘ worst case’ scenario
The agency assisted or offered to assist about a dozen smaller agencies across Texas, according to documents obtained by the ACLU of Texas and provided to the Chronicle.
Customs and Border Protection sent sniper teams and dozens of members of its tactical team to help monitor George Floyd’s funeral in Pearland.
They offered “aerial assets” to Val Verde County on the border as well as drones and riot weaponry to police in Kingsville, and called the Ector County Sheriff’s Office to see if they could help there.
In Refugio, the agency sent 10 officers and patrol vehicles, records show, though an official from the Refugio County District Attorney’s Office said the agents guarded the interior of the courthouse and did not interact with protesters.
Documents show local cops treated the Floyd funeral and protests against his killing as a “worst case scenario” and welcomed CBP assistance. A Pearland Police spokesman said the department contacted Customs and Border Protection after learning of its tactical team’s abilities via the Department of Public Safety. (Local departments do not have to reimburse federal agencies for such assistance.)
In early June, Houston-area police learned of a possible Black Lives Matter protest in La Porte, and contacted Customs and Border Protection. Emails show La Porte Police Assistant Chief D. J. Ditrich contacted chiefs from neighboring police agencies, including Pasadena, Deer Park, Baytown, and the Port of Houston, warning that the group of protesters “appears to have good intentions” but “we have no way of knowing or limiting the amount of people who come and are doing our best to plan for worst case scenarios.”
Follow-up emails between Port of Houston officials and Customs and Border Protection, which monitors the facility, put eight agents on “hot standby.”
In response to records requests, officials at the Ector County Sheriff’s Office said Customs and Border Protection contacted the department to offer assistance related to a local protest in early June. “The offer from CBP was made via a telephone call to the ECSO administration,” officials wrote.
“These are pretty close to federal military troops,” Kerlikowske said. “For them to be knocking on doors and offering this type of assistance is just totally inappropriate.”
Vast federal police agency
In the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush overhauled the nation’s immigration and border protection agencies. Customs and Border Protection was born when officials fused the U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs Service, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service into one agency, overseen by the Department of Homeland Security.
The agency patrols the northern and southern borders, oversees the nation’s ports of entry, and collect tens of billions of dollars every year through the enforcement of trade and tariff laws.
Federal law grants its agents special authority within 100 miles of any U.S. “external boundary,” a region that includes nine of the nation’s 10 largest cities, and where more than 200 million Americans live. Customs and Border Protection has law enforcement powers distinct from those of everyday street cops. At border crossings, agents can conduct routine searches without a warrant — something normally required under citizens’ Fourth Amendment protections.
The agency employs more than 45,000 armed personnel and has a budget of more than $20 billion, larger than the combined strength of the FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“Since about 2010, the apprehensions have been going way down, but it’s a sexy agency to throw money at for boots on the ground,” said Marco Lopez, another high-ranking former official at Customs and Border Protection. “So if you’re not catching people at the border, but have to justify your budget, you begin to open offices inside the U.S. This is how you end up with offices further north — and the more obvious one is the Houston office.”
Unrestrained workforce?
As it has grown, Customs and Border Protection has come under increasing criticism as civil liberties watchdogs and others complain of human rights abuses that go unchecked and misconduct from an unrestrained workforce.
More than 1,300 agents were arrested for misconduct from 2014-18. A 2015 government audit found the agency lacked sufficient internal investigators and that CBP’s arrests for corruption “far exceed” such statistics at other federal law enforcement agencies.
And over the last decade, more than 100 people have died in encounters with Border Patrol agents, according to information from the ACLU, including incidents where agents shot at migrants or suspects across national borders without consequence.
“They are the least accountable federal agency,” Drake said. “There are ample examples of them violating people’s constitutional rights.”
Customs and Border Protection’s expansion beyond its traditional role comes “without a policy debate about what is the appropriate role of CBP and what it should be,” said John Sandweg, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“When you deploy Air/Marine or BORTAC, those guys all exist for a reason, to make our country more secure,” he said. “To deploy where they have no training, where they are going to cause trouble … it’s outrageous. You can talk about being ‘tough on the border,’ but this isn’t tough, it’s stupid.”
Gonzales, the Refugio County sheriff, didn’t see it that way. In the midst of the protests elsewhere, he didn’t want to take any chances.
“I didn’t want to wait until the last minute to call for troops,” Gonzales said. “If I had dealings with these aggressive people, I’d get ready with snipers or whatever I needed to protect my people.”