ProPublica posted excerpts from what had been a secret Facebook page where 9,500 border patrol agents exchanged messages. Their contents are disgusting: racist, sexist, cruel, crude.
The article begins:
Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.
In one exchange, group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to the post of a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in May while in custody at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas. One member posted a GIF of Elmo with the quote, “Oh well.” Another responded with an image and the words “If he dies, he dies….”
Perhaps the most disturbing posts target Ocasio-Cortez. One includes a photo illustration of her engaged in oral sex at an immigrant detention center. Text accompanying the image reads, “Lucky Illegal Immigrant Glory Hole Special Starring AOC.”
Another is a photo illustration of a smiling President Donald Trump forcing Ocasio-Cortez’s head toward his crotch. The agent who posted the image commented: “That’s right bitches. The masses have spoken and today democracy won.”
The posts about Escobar and Ocasio-Cortez are “vile and sexist,” said a staffer for Escobar. “Furthermore, the comments made by Border Patrol agents towards immigrants, especially those that have lost their lives, are disgusting and show a complete disregard for human life and dignity.”
The head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Joaquin Castro, reviewed the Facebook discussions and was incensed. “It confirms some of the worst criticisms of Customs and Border Protection,” said Castro, a Democrat who represents San Antonio. “These are clearly agents who are desensitized to the point of being dangerous to migrants and their co-workers.” He added that the agents who made the vulgar comments “don’t deserve to wear any uniform representing the United States of America.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
9,500. Soon we’ll be hearing something along the lines of the “not all [Individual-1] supporters are racists or bigots” when that number is cited. Whether they are or not, they all enable this bigotry and hate. And there’s a long history here, as with the story of Harlon Carter, a murderous former border patrol guard who later led the militancy that the NRA has become (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlon_Carter). Mike Cooley of Drive-By Truckers wrote a song about it too. I’m sure they’ve been inspired to write some new songs to protest this criminality.
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These border agents are an example of who supports Trump and exactly the kind of stormtroopers Trump wants for his future Trumpland.
Why Trumpland?
I think Trump will make an attempt, probably a lame one through a Twitter rant ordering his followers to rise up (hasn’t he done this at least once already), to take over the U.S. and suspend the Constitution if he is not reelected in 2020.
He will also tweet that if he loses, it will be their fault and not his.
If successful, Trump will change the name of the country, because he can’t resist plastering his last name on everything that doesn’t move or crawls, and he will charge a tax for it once he is a leader for life.
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We seem to be on the same wavelength!
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Trumpalndia!
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Trumplandia!
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If you listen to Michael Cohen’s testimony before congress a few months back, he suggested something similar would happen if Trump did not win the 2020 election. That he would not give up his power easily. MC knows Trump better than most people so I took his words seriously or at least acknowledge there could be some truth to them.
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If public school teachers posted similar comments about their students on Facebook, they would deserve to be fired.
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As Castro has said, those that post this vile, racist, sexist content do not deserve to wear the uniform, and I agree. In addition, with so many people including young children in these makeshift private facilities, with a layer of privatization between the feds and the asylum seekers, the feds may very well claim “culpable deniability” We need human rights groups in these facilities.
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“We need human rights groups in these facilities.” Correct. Clearly an effort that should be led by the merciful– like UN workers in the Euro refugee camps.
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It is clearly far past the time that Trump’s Black Shierts be fired, arrested, and jailed for these acts. If a liberal was working for ICE or the Boarder Patrol posted something supporting these refugees you can be certain that they would be immediately fired.
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Indeed!
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“Secret” Fakebook postings?
The only thing dumber than posting on Fakebook is believing one’s posts are ” secret.”
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Some Facebook Groups are closed except to members and, ofc, the Russians.
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A joke. Ofc, in a world where anyone can take a screenshot and pass it on, in which malware can take over people’s computers and record actions in the background, and so on, there simply is no such thing as online privacy. So SomeDAM is correct.
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Dmitry’s Secrets
Dmitry likes his secrets
And posts them on “The Book”
They’re read by Ryan Seacrest
And everyone who looks
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I hope to live to see the day when Trump and Miller are standing in the dock at the International Criminal Court.
Kidnapping, child abuse, sexual assault, murder, violation of amnesty laws
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cx: asylum laws
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Exactly…Bob. You wrote it, “Kidnapping, child abuse, sexual assault, murder, violation of amnesty laws.”
Bob, I add something to make your statement even more descriptive …”Human & Child Trafficking” to the MAX.
I just watched again “All the President’s Men.” We all need to know and remember the depths of corruption for money and power.
Sickening.
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Amen
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… the ceremony of innocence is drowned …
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never have those words so struck home
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Yeats’ “Second Coming,” written in the aftermath of the bloodbath of WWI & its overlap w/the Irish War of Independence are apt here: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold/ Anarchy is loosed upon the world/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” While the casualty numbers are far fewer at our SW border, there is that same sense that the machinations of government have failed us: its aims are achieved via casual massacre of the barely-adult & whole villages of commonfolk.
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Vice had a story about Verdun. It was the bloodiest battle of WW1, and the battle lasted nine months. Every spring a bomb squad goes through the forest and takes out about three tons of live bombs. Some they have to detonate on site. It’s madness.
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There is a terrific 2005 novel about a young Irish soldier in WWI called “A Long Long Way” by Sebastian Barry. The novel could be summed up as “The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
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In the meantime, Trump has militarized the 4th of July and the Republican Party is selling tickets to attend his ego-maniacal desire to be the dictator in chief. Tanks will be present and the flyover will be on time. I am beyond being disgusted.
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This is like a fascist parody. How disturbingly vulgar!
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Exactly. Trump and Miller are almost impossible to parody because they so effectively parody themselves. Kind of like Abbot and Costello do Göring and Goebbels.
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Where is Leni Riefenstahl when you need her to film this?
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⚡️ Breaking ⚡️ Exclusive Video ⚡️
Rehearsal for XLV’s July 4th Parade
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exactly
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Here’s the difference. Soviet soldiers understood they were pawns with no power. They were abused and knew labor camps or worse were waiting for them if they voiced their opinions. Based on the what I’ve seen and personally know about the U.S. military, they’re loving it.
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Where have all the howitzers gone?
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Speak loudly, stupidly, and show off your big stick!
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Long guns blasting
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What would have happened to those public servants under Obama;s reign? Just curious what the s.o.p. for this kind of thing is. We’re becoming desensitized to evil. And Trump said he won’t take climate action because it threatens corporate profits: “I’m not willing to do that”
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I think this is a tough question to answer about the Obama’s presidency. His Justice Dept and FBI failed to even investigate the torture regime set up by Cheney/Bush at the CIA black sites in Iraq & Afghanistan.
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Or Russian interference in the 2016 election.
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“These are clearly agents who are desensitized to the point of being dangerous to migrants and their co-workers.” Julian Castro is wise. This is the language of weary warriors & MASH units. They must tell themselves these things in order to to keep on doing the dirty job assigned to them by POTUS.
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Let’s give a big cheer for Pro-Publica. From their mouth to the ears of MSNBC, NYT, etc.
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Yes!
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https://news.yahoo.com/trump-aide-stephen-miller-meet-great-grandfather-flunked-naturalization-test-203424658.html
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The reason given on the denial of naturalization/citizenship to Miller’s great-grandfather: ignorance
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Too funny!
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The whole article is terrific. It’s appalling how many of these anti-immigrant advisors are the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of immigrants themselves.
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Under any circumstances, Trump’s attempt to turn the nation’s 4th of July celebration into the Donald Trump Apotheosis would be disgusting. Under these, it is unspeakably shameful and sickening, utterly immoral. It’s a new low, even for him.
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No. That’s not quite correct. The lows in this week’s news are a) an instance of rape, b) the kidnapping of children, and c) the ongoing child abuse. It doesn’t get much lower than those two things.
Nancy Pelosi, are you listening? Hello? Earth to Nancy. Hear these children’s cries.
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cx: three things. I’m so furious I can barely write a coherent sentence.
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Border Patrol were scum before this administration. This administration certainly isn’t helping.
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Are border patrol agents callous because they have been presented an impossible task? Does this job attract callous people who enjoy looking down their nose at the unfortunate?
This is always the problem of hiring people to do enforcement jobs and then under funding them. I have experienced this phenomenon in teaching, where teachers occasionally develop a jaded view of their students.
I am not forgiving any particular behavior, but it makes me uncomfortable to paint any group with a broad brush. It is important that we separate behavior from humanity. Failure to do this plunges us into the cycle of accusation and defense that has been so devastating to human history.
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Do we know for sure that all of these 9500 people on the FB are actually employed by border control? I listened to a guy on NPR this morning who is the head of the border control union who said we have no evidence that all of the people on this FB are actually border control agents. No doubt the stuff on that page is horrendously disgusting. Not disagreeing with that.
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Well, it bills itself as a site for agents, and membership has to be approved by the site’s administrator. So, perhaps not all, but. . . .
And, some of these people who posted this repugnant garbage have been identified.
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Population of Honduras: 9.265 million; population of Guatemala: 16.91 million; population of Nicaragua: 6.218 million (2017); population of 6.378 million (2017). These are countries the size of cities. We need a Marshall Plan for rebuilding them after the covert wars we’ve conducted there, which have created a refugee crisis. We need a path to citizenship for migrants. We need decent facilities for these refugees. And we need international observers, doctors, lawyers, and social workers at the replacements for these sites, which need to become places where legitimate asylum claims are speedily processed, and work is done to integrate these families into US society. We need politicians like Trump to stop lying that migrants steal American jobs, something that economists know to be false, including ones who work in his farcical misadministration. We need Trump and Miller’s evil plan to make migration dependent upon wealth and professional status and knowledge of English–stuff that would have kept Miller’s own ancestors out of this country–to go down in flames. And we need this vile, dishonest, criminal, narcissistic, cretinous, racist, sexist, ignorant, uneducated, crude, blubbering, predatory, treasonous, dictator-sycophantic moron of a president to be soundly defeated and then indicted for the many, many crimes he has committed.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Matt. 25, KJV
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It’s not just the covert wars. We tacitly approved the Honduran coup in 2009, which saw the emergence of death squads, killings, abortion made completely illegal, etc. We then gave the country $200M and turned a blind eye as to how it was used. Now they’re on our doorstep after no longer being able to take the horror of what the new government is doing.
We need to pay attention to foreign policy NO MATTER WHO’S IN CHARGE-RED OR BLUE.
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Thank you for this note, Laura G.
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And, love your website. Good fortune to you in your professional endeavor!
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