It was bound to happen. The conspiracy theories of Trump administration loyalists burrowing deep into the Biden administration to sabotage his policies were inevitable once Biden proved he wasn’t up to the task of governing. Some excuse had to be found to distract from the incompetence and this one’s a no-brainer.
In truth, there’s only a small number of government employees who are holdovers from the previous regime that leave their positions. The permanent bureaucracy dominates. The Border Patrol is one of the few agencies that backed Donald Trump in the election so they’re a likely target for conspiracy theories about “sabotaging” the current president’s response to the border crisis.
Actually, if the Border Patrol really is sabotaging the Biden administration, it’s getting a ton of help from Biden himself.
“This is a planned, coordinated attempt to sabotage the Biden administration,” said Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol agent-turned-immigrant rights activist who works with the Southern Border Communities Coalition.
Budd continued on to say that the same people who responsible for harsh treatment of migrants during the Trump era are still in charge: “They do this on purpose. And none of that has changed in the management has not changed at all. But the same people who separated families and created the last crisis are doing it again.”
But it’s not just Border Patrol management who are undermining the Biden administration’s attempts to roll back Trump-era immigration policies. It’s also those in charge of the labor union that represents rank-and-file agents, the National Border Patrol Council.
That would certainly be a novel approach to the concept of work: Border Patrol agents deliberately making their jobs 10 times harder by sabotaging their own agency?
Ultimately, Judd’s direct line to Trump and influence over rank-and-file agents meant that any attempt by DHS leaders to effect a change policy that wasn’t to union leaders’ liking was effectively vetoed, the official continued, adding that the dynamic most likely persists even though Trump has left the White House: “You have way too many scenarios where the secretary or the head of CBP issues a directive, and there’s just an absolute recalcitrance in the organization. There is a lack of command and control in a way that is dangerous.”
A government union that undermines the authority of the elected president? This is a very familiar problem for any Republican president of the last half-century. But it’s only a story if it happens to a Democrat.
[Former HUD Secretary Julian] Castro said he would not be surprised if the Border Patrol union was colluding with Republicans to undermine Biden because Trump “allowed that agency to go rogue” and allowed the union to dictate policy. “He encouraged their worst instincts, made 1000 different administrative changes fostered a culture of anti-immigrant sentiment, and I believe at the end, administratively, essentially gave them more power over how the operation is conducted,” he said.
Note that when Trump was president, it was all Trump’s fault. Now that Biden is president, it’s the Border Patrol union “colluding” (where have we heard that word?) with Republicans to undermine the genius of Joe Biden.
Border Patrol agents didn’t call forth the human tidal wave heading toward our border. They didn’t conjure up the crisis. This crisis is a 100 percent, made-in-the-Biden-White-House clusterfark of a crisis. Not even government workers can screw things up as badly as Joe Biden has done in less than 3 short months.
In 1969, after years of LBJ’s mismanagement, it took about 6 months for Democrats to start calling Vietnam “Nixon’s War.” Trying to blame Trump and loyal Border Patrol agents for the crisis won’t work this time.
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