Biden policies prompt border agents to retire in droves

FPI / May 28, 2024

Border Patrol has lost 4,000 agents since October 2020. Most of those losses are attributed to sinking morale caused by Joe Biden's open border policies, border agents say.

“The administration is so bad for morale,” the Washington Examiner cited a senior Border Patrol official who spoke on the condition of anonymity as saying. “I’m not trying to be political. I’m just speaking facts. Catch and release is demoralizing for agents.”

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, twice as many border agents have chosen to retire early on Biden's watch compared to retirement rates under President Donald Trump.

For many border agents, their work has become comparable to the movie "Groundhog Day," as agents are continually arresting illegals only to release them rather than detain them, the Examiner cited retired second-in-command at Border Patrol Matthew Hudak as saying.

Hudak said agents face between 150,000 and 300,000 migrants being arrested every month.

“What you have to do to be able to divert your focus to be able to do that really has opened up a tremendously dangerous vulnerability for cartels and other criminals,” Hudak said.

“That’s what’s frustrating for agents is so many people are encountered and then ultimately released because there is just no resources for detention,” Hudak said. “The volume exceeds any practical ability for detention, and there’s a lack of any messaging or policy or action of solid deterrence.”

Between Fiscal Year 2021 and 2023, 3,665 border agents left for an average of 1,222 per year. An additional 616 agents have left in the first seven months of fiscal 2024, which runs from October 2023 through September 2024, the CBP said.

Early retirements have soared under Team Biden.

Between 2014 and 2020, the number of early retirements averaged 257 per year. Since 2021, that figure has more than doubled to an average of 529 agents who chose to leave at the first chance they were eligible.

“Under Biden, things are the worst they have ever been by far,” an agent who is based in Arizona told the Examiner in a previous interview. “Agents are calling in all the time. You always hear, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ or, ‘What’s the point?’ in reference to doing our job. Agents are afraid of ending up on the news for doing their job or getting in trouble for doing their job. There is no morale.”

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