Senior Border Patrol agents warn of difficulties from migration surge: House report

The House Oversight and Homeland Security Committees on Tuesday published a joint staff report in which a group senior Border Patrol agents identified a litany of security and enforcement problems stemming from the surge in illegal crossings.

The panels interviewed nine senior Border Patrol agents, including several Chief Patrol Agents in charge of the southwest land border sectors, with many of them suggesting that existing enforcement efforts had fallen short or outright incentivized additional arrivals at the border.

When asked whether the ongoing practice of releasing border crossers into the interior was functioning as a "pull factor," Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin said "I think optimally, other than the rare occasion where you have someone with a crazy medical condition, everyone should be detained."

"And that, to me, is the most obvious way to not encourage illegal migration, is everyone's held until they have a hearing," he continued.

Yuma Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Dustin Caudle agreed with that sentiment, stating that "[a]gain, the belief that they are going to be released with no consequence is certainly something that many migrants tell our agents."

Some agents, pointed to the effects of border barriers as deterrents.

Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason Owens (now Border Patrol chief), for instance, insisted that planned construction of a border wall could have alleviated many of the problems.

"When we, the Border Patrol, would talk about wall, it was everything that came with that," he said. "That was the infrastructure. That was the better communications, the better detection capability. All those things, as I've said before, are force multipliers to my men and women that are out on patrol, and not having them is not helpful to us."

Others highlighted that the influx had contributed to great numbers of "gotaways."

Owens pointed to the strains on manpower preventing enforcement operations in the field.

"So, by virtue of the fact that I don't have as many agents out on patrol because they're addressing that flow, then it can provoke the gotaway numbers to be higher because we're not out there," he said. "If we were out there, it stands [to] reason we might be able to apprehend more of them."

"They've continued to rise," San Diego Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke said of gotaways.

"So I think gotaways are a public safety concern, but, as we discussed, I believe we discussed earlier also potentially a national security concern as well," Modlin added.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.