Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in Washington and author of the book, “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.” Follow her on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely her own. View more opinion articles on CNN.
As progressive members of the House of Representatives traveled to Texas to see immigrant holding facilities for themselves Monday, ProPublica published a news story about a highly offensive Facebook group made up of current and former Border Patrol agents.
What they found is deeply distressing: Agents joking about deaths of migrants and calling them “floaters;” a photoshopped image of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez having her head shoved down in Donald Trump’s crotch; another one doctored to make her appear to be engaging in oral sex with a migrant; and agents suggesting someone throw a burrito at Latina congresswomen visiting a migrant holding facility.
The head of Customs and Border Patrol said that the posts were “completely inappropriate” and “any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.”
The racist, sexist and cruel Facebook group has some 9,500 members – clearly, more than just a few bad apples. There is something rotten at the heart of the Border Patrol and the entire agency must be held accountable for its toxic, bigoted culture.
A slap on the wrist won’t do here. Any agent making comments this vile is a danger to migrants and should be fired immediately. Agents who are members of this group and failed to report coworkers, or simply observed and laughed along, should also face professional consequences.
But beyond the surfacing of the social media account, it’s the culture of the entire agency that has been exposed here, and this was all predictable. This is an agency, after all, staffed by people who – however they came into the job – are now willing to carry out Donald Trump’s punitive, cruel immigration agenda.
Its norm-destroying practices include ripping children from their parents and putting toddlers in detention centers. Is it any surprise that human beings capable of such cruelties would in turn exhibit this kind of malice on Facebook?
People are free to comment on social media as they see fit in their free time. But when those comments suggest that government agents may be a serious danger to people over whom they have near-total power, the institutions that oversee those agents are obligated to step in. In this case, with an agency that has turned so thoroughly rotten, perhaps it’s time to gut it and start anew.
This all, of course, goes back to the head of the snake – the man in the White House. His comments about immigrants and women have also been vulgar and offensive. When the President’s own Twitter feed is a sewer of hate and lies, it’s no surprise that those who work below him believe that they have license to post similar garbage.
And the bigotry extends beyond government officials. As Ocasio-Cortez and several of her colleagues visited the detention facility, they were met by pro-detention protesters heckling them. Imagine that: There are a number of people in Texas who are willing to get off of the couch to go protest in favor of detaining vulnerable women and children.
Many will certainly insist that there are a great number of good Border Patrol agents. Certainly, it’s true. There are a great number who are kind to the children in their care and who are productive members of their communities. But this toxic, 9,500-member Facebook group shows that the culture of the agency is fundamentally broken, in part because the current mission of the agency is fundamentally inhuman.
Border Patrol should terminate employees who behave in bigoted, sexist and unacceptable ways. If only that could start with the President.