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Public Shaming of the Border Patrol
Border Patrol agents have it tough enough: a huge increase in migrants coming from Central America, demands of their time to provide medical transportation, and babysitting. Oh yes, and law enforcement.
But one professor thinks that they need to be chastised for the role they play on the southern border. Kate Cronin-Furman, a professor of University College London, insisted in a New York Times op-ed that she doesn’t want to dox the Border Patrol agents. She only wants to embarrass them into leaving their jobs, by collecting and using the information that is available from immigration lawyers and journalists:
The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements,” she argued.
For someone who is ‘just following orders,’ the prospect of being internationally shamed as a rights abuser and being unable to travel freely may be significant enough to persuade them to stop participating.
Ms. Cronin-Furman is apparently unaware that these people are carrying out the duties referenced above, as well as arresting smugglers and drug traffickers.
Joe Romero, a Border Patrol Supervisor, says they have learned how to manage resources and are doing the best they can:
‘What the Border Patrol is doing is constantly evaluating everything along the border in every sector and area and determining where is the greatest need, so you see the agents shifted from one area to another to adjust to those needs,’ said Romero. ‘Whether you’re working a line or checkpoint there’s always something we have to adjust, and these criminal organizations are adjusting too. They’re exploiting whatever we’ve got.’
I assume Ms. Cronin-Furman hasn’t been to the border and prefers to believe the propaganda of the Left. Maybe she should set up an interview with a smuggler or drug trafficker or two.
Published in Policing
What a great country we have. Even the dumbest airheads amongst us can actually get their stupidity repeated over and over again.
One thing I didn’t say (but maybe it’s obvious) is that by putting out the information to “shame” the Border Patrol, they could be putting their lives at risk. Someone could see it as a badge of honor to take one of them out. But of course that is not her intention, either.
It’s always instructive to hear what people in other countries with little knowledge of the US and no skin in the game think we should do with our borders – particularly one who lives on an island (whereas we have ~2,000 miles of border with Mexico).
It’s no surprise that a London prof would accuse us of atrocities.
Sadly, it is also no surprise that the NYT would go out of their way to publish the accusation as an op/ed piece.
I wish all of them weren’t so darned predictable. Sigh.
Of course it is dangerous and could be felonious. Doxing law enforcement of any kind is playing with fire. But she probably never learned the error of doing that either.[
Chaos must reign with this crowd. It was once fashionable among them to refer to police officers as pigs.
Kate Cronin-Furman is Exhibit A of the futility of basing a political system on pursuit of “self-congratulation” ( in the words of the inestimable Thomas Sowell). It is not possible that there is a coherent philosophy behind the elimination of all borders. Even well-off white women with tenure have to know that they would eventually see the system from which they draw an unduly large share of material benefits would collapse as the immigrant waves rapidly re-create the conditions they sought to leave.
This is ‘spoiled chick syndrome’ in which she gets to posture about how much better she is than those who do what has to be done to provide for her safety and well-being. Like the undeserving princess living in Beverly Hills while openly despising cops, sanitation workers and Mercedes service techs.
Almost makes me wish for Chairman Bernie and Politiboro First Secretary Ocasio-Cortez to implement a plan to place entire Honduran extended families in every house and condo once worth over $400,000, starting with the upper East Side and college towns.
Did you coin this, @oldbathos? I plan to use the term every chance I get!
They cannot embarrass these agents. What they are doing is threatening physical violence against them and their families, which can range from verbal abuse to assassination.
You can’t prevent “doxxing”, because a lot of information is in the public sphere these days (Google yourself and see what you come up with). However, doxxing associated with goading to take action should be liable, even if the action taken is not what the goaders suggested . . .
I agree. Not only that, the professor’s expectations are naive from a Left and feminine point of view. Oh gosh, we’re going to hurt their feelings. Not.
The left collectively learned its lesson from how the general public reacted 45-50 years ago to their attempts to publicly shame and harass U.S. military personnel, because of the left’s hatred of the Vietnam War in particular and American military in general. The current attacks on the Border Patrol agents is simply a manifestation of that same type of hatred, which (for now) those on the left think they can get away with because Border Patrol agents are part of ICE and not part of the U.S. military.
They realize that calling American soldiers Nazis is bad for their long-term political hopes, but they’ve yet to be punished for doing the same with Border Patrol agents, because of their own hatred of U.S. immigration policy. So until it costs them at the ballot box, they have no qualms about letting the full fury of their hatred fly at the agents.
Didn’t Obama’s friend Ayers call the police to protect him from a reporter?
They sure like to talk a big story, but when they get scared, who do they call; someone with authority and a gun.
They love people with authority and a gun who they think they can control like robots, just like big government stateists in every other nation love people with authority and a gun who’ll suppress those who don’t think like them (and someone like Eric Swalwell gives the game away when he says he’d take people’s guns away by force. Eric’s not going door-to-door in commando gear to do the job himself, but thinks as president, he could order the nation’s federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to do the job for him).
I guess I coined it. You are welcome to it.
The “professor” is simply advocating for mob rule over the rule of law. She opposes orderly processes, and wishes to return to the days (generally before Moses laid out a system of laws) when your answer to anything you didn’t like was to commit as much violence as possible against those connected with what you didn’t like.
The British have been abandoning the rule of law faster than the Americans, so if this “professor” is British, she may be more sympathetic to the idea of mob rule instead of law rule.
I wonder when her students will realize they can all get an ‘A’ with minimal effort….
When people make these kinds of statements, they have no interest in being responsible, factual or logical. It’s the outrage that counts, and she has that in spades. And so do the mobs who agree with her.
They’re always supportive of mob rule as long as it’s their mob . . .
Susan,
As we have been mentioning on Ricochet recently “truth” is not a high priority for the left wing. It is important to realize that “justice” is not a big hit with them either. Real justice requires truth as a starting point and then requires respect for due process. Trying to subvert real justice is typical of the left. They live in their magic dream world where they are in touch with a special justice that nobody else understands. Of course, whenever the left gets power (Maduro) we find out that they are the most hideous abusers.
Regards,
Jim
Very astute, @jamesgawron.
She’s a professor – at a school in London? It’s shocking to think that so many of these so-called teachers are in front of youth, then spewing garbage like that. Interesting how they all seem to get plenty of room in the NYT or Washington Post. This shaming stuff is also disturbing. If you have an opinion fine, make it, but people are out to hurt others in very personal ways and see nothing wrong with that. That says more about her than her opinion of border patrol.
You hit on the key, most disturbing points. I guess we’re learning continually that academia are seriously flawed (to be tactful). These poor agents are diapering babies, acting as medical transport, and they have earned the right to be treated decently.
Truth . . .