“Borderline Cruelty”
Oct 14, 2011
The following op-ed on the No More Deaths report by Randy McGuire ran in the Binghamton, NY Press and Sun Bulletin, the Ithaca Journal, and the Elmira, NY Star-Gazette.
(If the article is too small for you to read, click on it to open a larger PDF version.)
Border Patrol officers are supposed to be screened to make sure that they are not xenophobes from anti-immigrant groups. A very high percentage are not.
You don’t have to be a xenophobe when you join the Border Patrol to be corrupted by the internal culture of cruelty after you join. This is a well-known social psychological phenomenon: anyone in a prison-guard-like role is extremely likely to begin abusing the people in his/her care, especially if the other people in the organization are doing it too.