![]() “RGV,” as it’s known in the Border Patrol, has been the epicenter of this year’s “border crisis,” the latest in a long series that stretches back decades-crises that inevitably lead to calls for more money, more agents, more fences. ![]() Border Patrol agent in the Rio Grande Valley. But this wasn’t a regular shooting incident.Įarly the day before, while Kerlikowske, an affable career cop who had spent five years as Obama’s drug czar, was going about his meetings in CBP’s headquarters at Washington’s cavernous Ronald Reagan Building, three Honduran women had surrendered to a green-uniformed U.S. So often, in fact, that the agency doesn’t even bother to release details on most shooting incidents. The gunshot itself wasn’t all that surprising Border Patrol agents regularly open fire on suspected smugglers, border crossers and people harassing them from across the Mexican line. On his sixth night after taking office in March, a Border Patrol agent’s single gunshot 1,500 miles away from Washington interrupted Kerlikowske’s sleep. ![]() President Barack Obama’s new head of Customs and Border Protection, Kerlikowske could have used a week of quiet as he began to figure out the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, with its 46,000 gun-carrying Customs officers and Border Patrol agents and massive $12.4 billion annual budget. ![]() G il Kerlikowske was hoping to make it through at least his first week on the job without being awakened in the middle of the night. Graff is editor of Politico Magazine, former editor of Washingtonian magazine and author of, among other works, The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War (Little Brown, 2011). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |