Border Patrol union takes center stage under Trump
SOLANA BEACH (AP) — Once a week, union leaders representing U.S. Border Patrol agents host a radio show from a sleepy office park near San Diego, where studio walls are covered with an 8-by-12-foot American flag and portraits of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
For about an hour, the agents mix discussions about border security with shoptalk and freewheeling news commentary in a show that airs by podcast and on a radio station in Tucson, Arizona.
The show has a somewhat unlikely lead sponsor: the hard-right Breitbart News site, which isn’t known as a fan of labor unions. The hosts open a revealing window into how union leaders hope to reshape enforcement on 6,000 miles of border with Mexico and Canada.
The show, called “The Green Line” for the color of Border Patrol uniforms, is aimed at agents, Congress and the news media. It’s part of a 4-year-old effort to raise the union’s profile, a strategy that included outspoken support for Trump’s presidential bid.
That move paid off in November. Within a week of Trump taking office, the Border Patrol chief was forced out and replaced by a union favorite to lead the agency as it undertakes a major hiring spree.
The union, headed by a former member of Trump’s transition team, has endeared itself to the president, whose top strategist, Steve Bannon, led Breitbart News before joining the White House. The conservative site features the union’s views in its border stories, while acknowledging the sponsorship.
The show’s hosts alternate between workplace gripes like radios that don’t work in remote areas and topics in the news. They have called the Black Lives Matter activists “domestic terrorists” and Mexico “a corrupt country.”
One recent morning, they scorned an airline worker who maligned the Border Patrol when a cohost checked in for a flight, lawmakers who want to declare California a sanctuary state and unidentified pockets of the agency that have resisted Trump’s directives to expand immigration enforcement. The discussion turned to a Supreme Court hearing involving a Mexican teen slain by an agent who fired across the border. The question was whether the agent could be sued.
Are agents “going to be second-guessing themselves when the rocks are flying, when the cinderblocks are flying?” asked co-host Shawn Moran, a vice president of the National Border Patrol Council. “Are they going to hesitate and say, ‘You know what? This guy could end up suing me.’ Forget the fact that he could end up killing the agent.”
The union’s ascendancy comes as Trump prepares to add 5,000 Border Patrol agents, hire more immigration judges and deportation officers and build a wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Last week, the administration called for companies to build wall prototypes in San Diego, not far from “The Green Line” studio.
“The Green Line” arranged Breitbart’s support through Brandon Darby, a onetime left-wing activist turned FBI informer who helped convict two people accused of a bomb plot during the 2008 Republican National Convention. Darby attracted the notice of founder Andrew Bretibart, who recruited him to join the upstart news site.
As managing director of Breitbart Texas, Darby published leaked photos inside overcrowded child-detention facilities in 2014, drawing attention to a surge of Central Americans crossing the border. Darby and Bannon created “Cartel Chronicles,” a bilingual feature about organized crime that includes articles from dangerous parts of Mexico written under pseudonyms.