I Was a Border Patrol Agent for 27 Years. Here’s How We Fix the Border

The border is a mess!

That is a sentence that has been written too many times and it will continue to be written until Congress gets its act together to erect tall fences and wide gates.

What do I mean by tall fences and wide gates? Back in 2008, the late Senator Fred Thompson mentioned a similar phrase during a debate, and it resonated with me. The tall fences stand for border security, which, in many cases, means actual tall fences. But it also means increases in personnel, drones, sensors, and cameras, all backed by strong enforcement policies.

The wide gates stand for increased legal channels for migration, both seasonal and permanent. (Not every migrant wants to remain here permanently.) These channels might replace the rush of illegal immigration currently at our border with an orderly process where people can wait in line. By making migration legal and more predictable, Border Patrol will devote more of its time to pursuing actual security threats.

Critics against border barriers argue that they’re ineffective because people can simply go over, under, or through them. This actually misses the point. In urban areas, where seconds count in whether a person is caught by Border Patrol, a wall, or, better yet, parallel walls, can slow border crossers just enough to convert gotaways (of which, there have been over 1.7 million since Biden took office) into apprehensions.

So where do we build these walls? As I always say, a wall works where it makes sense. “From sea to shining sea” was a great campaign slogan, but even Trump quickly admitted that it doesn’t actually make sense on the ground.

Border Patrol highlights three different areas with unique challenges: urban areas where border crossers can blend in or escape into this country’s interior within seconds to minutes; rural areas where it’ll take migrants minutes to hours to disappear; and remote areas where it might take migrants hours to days and sometimes up to a week to disappear. Unsurprisingly, walls are most effective in urban/suburban areas where the vanishing time can be seconds (a great example of this is El Paso, TX, where if we don’t catch you right away, we are probably never going to). On the other hand, walls aren’t particularly helpful in a remote area, like Big Bend National Park, where it might take days to reach the nearest highway or city.

Something that is often lost when we talk about the border wall is that the wall isn’t a stand-alone entity. It was a system, a package based on the requirements put forth by Border Patrol agents. It comes with technology, like high-powered lights, motion sensors, and long-range cameras, and infrastructure like access roads.

That’s what made Biden’s abrupt cancellation of Trump’s border wall so damaging: Border Patrol wasn’t merely losing a wall; they were also losing many other tools necessary to apprehend illegal border crossers.

Walls and technology, while very important, have, of course, never made an apprehension. That’s why you need personnel. But it’s been difficult to hire, and even more difficult to retain good personnel. After peaking at 21,000 in 2011, the number of agents dropped to 19,000 in 2021. Enticing and retaining personnel is difficult because of the remote work locations, negative public perception of Border Patrol agents, and because those with higher degrees (which increasingly more agents possess) can find more lucrative work in the private sector, or even within ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit.

And to top it all off, suicides among Border Patrol agents reached a 13-year high in 2022. While there are many factors that led to these tragedies, low morale amidst this border crisis and repeated attacks on law enforcement by this Administration were contributing factors. Suicide rates were high even before Biden took office, as political figures and media denounced and often misrepresented law enforcement actions.

The entire profession has taking a hit. That is why it is important to invest in the workforce by providing mental health and resiliency programs. Supporting our agents, officers, and first responders is critical. We need them to be at their best in times of crisis. Distractions, whether real or perceived, can lead to problems.

In addition to the actual policy solutions, let’s also discuss how to implement them. While Congress must ultimately write border security legislation, they should rely upon the local expertise of property owners, business owners, community service providers and, of course, the Border Patrol to do so. That’s why it was so encouraging to see the Homeland Security Committee and the Committee on Oversight and Responsibility release a joint report where they extensively interviewed current and former chief and deputy chief patrol agents of the nine southwestern border sectors.

In short, when it comes to securing the border, we need a little bit of everything—barriers in strategic locations, access roads, more personnel, and modernized technology—working in tandem. Additionally, the metaphorical tall fences must contain wide gates. If not, Border Patrol will remain at a perpetual disadvantage.

Chris T. Clem is a retired Chief Patrol Agent. He served as a U.S. border patrol agent for 27 years.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.