Border Patrol Agents Ordered To Run, Hide From Shooters

Mexican drug-cartel violence is at an all-time high along the southern border yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered federal agents on the front line to “run away” and “hide” when encountering a shooter.

This may seem like a really bad joke, but it’s reality in the Obama DHS, which as we all know is headed by an official (Janet Napolitano) who is in deep denial about the severity of the crisis along the border. It wasn’t that long ago that Napolitano, who as Arizona governor advocated for illegal immigrants, declared the Mexican border “is as secure as it has ever been” and that violence in the area is merely a mistaken “perception.”

Those famous words, ridiculed in the press worldwide, came days after U.S. Border Patrol agents engaged in a violent gunshot battle with Mexican drug smugglers along the Rio Grande in Texas. The federal officers came under siege during a bust that netted half a ton of U.S.-bound marijuana. Yet the nation’s Homeland Security Secretary stood stoically at an El Paso port of entry called the Bridge of the Americas assuring that the area is safe and that “misinformation about safety” is negatively impacting border communities by driving visitors away and hurting local businesses.

DHS agents on the frontline, from the U.S. Border Patrol, know better. That’s why they are outraged that their delusional big boss has ordered them to flee when confronted with an armed person in public. The preposterous directive, intended to be kept quiet, was made public by the nation’s largest Border Patrol Union, which is located in Tucson Arizona. A nonprofit dedicated to studying the impact of immigration in the U.S. subsequently wrote about it in its blog.

The Border Patrol union reveals on its website that agents are forced to take lengthy computer courses known as “Virtual Learning Center” where they are taught in an “Active Shooter” course that if they encounter a shooter in a public place they are to “run away” and “hide.” Only if cornered by a shooter, as a last resort, should agents become “aggressive” and “throw things” at the attacker. They are also advised to “call law enforcement” and wait for their arrival.

This is downright insulting considering the U.S. Border Patrol is a law enforcement agency with officers that carry weapons for a reason. In the last few years violence in the southern border area has skyrocketed. In fact, DHS records show that as far back as 2008 there was a sharp increase in violence along the U.S. border with Mexico. The Obama Administration fought hard to keep the records secret but Judicial Watch forced their release with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. Read the report here.

More recently a State Department report exposed a “dramatic increase in violence” along the Mexican border and warned of “recent violent attacks and persistent security concerns” in the area. It lists tens of thousands of narcotics-related murders attributed to sophisticated and heavily armed drug cartels competing with each other for trafficking routes into the U.S. The agency repeatedly attributes the crisis to “narcoterrorism.”

In Texas the situation is so bad that state officials created a web site to track Mexican drug-cartel violence that’s transformed chunks of the southern border into a war zone. The Texas Department of Agriculture started the web site to keep farmers and residents informed about the growing danger created by Mexican drug cartels illegally crossing into the state. It’s occurring at an “increasingly alarming rate,” according to Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples and Washington is ignoring the crisis.