On the Frontlines: My Experience with Customs and Border Protection

By Jacqueline Thomas

Growing up in Arizona, I saw Customs and Border Protection (CBP) vehicles on a regular basis. My family and I passed through a customs check-point going into Mexico at least once every year, whether it was for a mission trip or a family vacation. From a very young age, I learned the importance of the jobs of those in the blue and green. 

Flash forward to 2020 in Washington, D.C. An opening for Deputy Press Secretary in the Trump administration’s CBP caught my eye. Seeing it as an incredible opportunity, I applied and was offered the position, which I accepted right away.  

Born and raised a conservative in Arizona, I knew that the media did not accurately report on the U.S. border patrol. Upon formally working for the agency, however, I was even more shocked at the deceitful coverage of its operations by the mainstream press. 

“With more than 60,000 employees, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, is one of the world's largest law enforcement organizations and is charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S. while facilitating lawful international travel and trade.

As the United States’ first unified border entity, CBP takes a comprehensive approach to border management and control, combining customs, immigration, border security, and agricultural protection into one coordinated and supportive activity.” 

Customs Officers (blue uniforms) are tasked with managing the ports of entry, where people legally come and go in the U.S. Border patrol officers (green uniforms) are tasked with managing the land in between the ports of entry and where most of the illegal border crossings happen.  

America is the most generous country in the world when it comes to immigration.  

The terrain all around our southern border is rough.  Deserts and mountains make for a desolate landscape, regardless of the season. The majority of border patrol encounters turn into rescue missions. People apprehended by border patrol that are trying to enter our country illegally are given food, water, and medical attention, as well as an opportunity to do the right thing and enter the country with the correct legal documents. Border patrol agents are trained in a variety of military and medical protocols, to ensure as many safe and healthy encounters as possible.  

During my first official tour of a customs port, the agent in charge told me about how the entire surrounding community came together to help one another at the start of the pandemic. Before COVID, the port was already experiencing record numbers of entrees and was running very low on personnel, supplies, and resources. This was only exacerbated by the pandemic.  

Agents started contracting the disease left and right. The whole community stepped in to help.  Meals were planned for the agents on the front lines and supplies for unaccompanied minors were brought to the station, including diapers, formula, clothes of all sizes, food, and hygiene products. The wife of an agent even stepped in to be a wet nurse for a 3-month-old baby that was found just a couple of feet over the U.S. border.  

These officers told me how it breaks their hearts to see babies and unaccompanied children dropped-off along the border, left for dead by whomever their guardians were and left vulnerable to the exploitation of the cartels that run their networks in the region. A lot of the agents have families and are parents themselves, and could never think of asking their own kids to embark on the perilous journey the migrant children endure to get to our border. There are countless horrific stories about the trip to America’s southern border that are not for a mixed audience. 

One same agent told me that when he and his agents hear their work’s ugly depiction in the media, they feel personally attacked and are saddened at how untruthful the partisan spin is. These agents have no political agenda. They simply put their lives on the line each day to protect the American homeland and interior.

The stories in the media about CBP agents are blatantly untrue much of the time.

CBP agents are demonized in the media for many reasons. In reality, the majority of what the agents are often accused of does not fall within their jurisdiction, their hands are tied with orders from headquarters, or a problem arises because of a lack of funding from the federal government.  

The largest shots the media fired against the CBP during the Trump Administration fell into one of these categories, among other issues related to bad policies from previous administrations.   

Name any hyperbolic, disparaging narrative about CBP from the former administration; I could easily debunk it. Take, for instance, the scandal that the Trump administration allegedly stole children away from their parents and held them captive in metal cages at border facilities.

These so-called “cages” were built under the direction of the Obama Administration, and the containment spaces were far from cages. The doors are see-through with no way to be locked, and migrants can come and go from them as they please. The notion that these transparent walls somehow constitute “cages” is a misleading lie. CBP never constructed these apparatuses with the intention of holding or detaining migrants.  

The men and women I met in the field of CBP are some of the most courageous, generous, and selfless individuals. They take their oath of office to protect our country very seriously.  

Every part of the missions we tackled in the front office (the HQ for the agency) was met with extreme professionalism, efficiency, and effectiveness. Rank and members were treated with respect, the agents were patriotic, and everyone always ran ahead of schedule. These men and women are some of the most resilient folks I have ever met. 

Now, what is currently happening at our southern border is a different story altogether.  This border fiasco is the direct result of the Biden administration throwing immigration enforcement out the window and replacing every common-sense Trump-era policy with an open border. 

I do not speak for those currently working at CBP headquarters as they get their instructions directly from the Biden White House. That being said, I encourage you to do your own research, to talk personally with someone working in a CBP role, and to exercise healthy skepticism and critical thinking when consuming media. I visited the heart of the border crisis in June of 2021, and what is happening there is 10x worse than what any media outlet is reporting.  

We need to pray for the agents working on the border’s front lines. We need to defend the right of sovereign states to secure their borders. And we need to vote for people that will bring us back to a pragmatic, America first border regime.

Photo via @jacquelinee_thomas