# Secret Border Patrol Facebook Page **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 1, 2019, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358 "2019-07-01T18:30:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/81 "2019-07-02T18:32:49Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > We dont know that. We dont know how many current agents actually made such comments. Maybe the worst trolls were fired during their one year probationary period. Those tend to be the worst haters. In the official CBP press release about this issue yesterday, they _knowingly_ lied about a member of Congress, using this lie as an excuse to blame others for their culpability. > I don’t _know_ about you, but that indicates to me there is an institutionalized racist, authoritarian, and anti-Democratic vein at the very top levels of this agency. And I, like you, don’t _know_ how many of these FB people are actual CBP officers, but I am willing to go out on a limb and say it’s damned certain that the **majority** of members are current CBP officials. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/82 "2019-07-02T18:38:27Z")
Shit, timed out. That’s the CBP _union_ response. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/83 "2019-07-02T18:41:23Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Shit, timed out. That’s the CBP _union_ response. And the Washington Examiner said that AOC _effectively_ called them Nazis. So, it’s a exaggeration, but not out of the blue. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/84 "2019-07-02T18:43:47Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > And the Washington Examiner said that AOC _effectively_ called them Nazis. Link, please? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/85 "2019-07-02T18:45:16Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Link, please? > **[AOC compares border crisis to Nazi Germany as the US gives free healthcare to...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2635243/aoc-compares-border-crisis-to-nazi-germany-as-the-us-gives-free-healthcare-to-illegal-immigrants/)** > > Because freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., once said that “a very, very long time ago” she had Jews in her family, I’m assuming it’s culturally fine for her to make Holocaust comparisons as she sees fit. But are we allowed to call her an... ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/86 "2019-07-02T18:49:59Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > [AOC compares border crisis to Nazi Germany as the US gives free healthcare to illegal immigrants - Washington Examiner](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/aoc-compares-border-crisis-to-nazi-germany-as-the-us-gives-free-healthcare-to-illegal-immigrants) The paper said nothing-a right wing editorial hack said it…which I knew would be the case even before I opened the link. So predictable. The hack just wrote a book titled “Privileged Victims: How America’s Culture Fascists Hijacked the Country and Elevated Its Worst People”, ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/87 "2019-07-02T18:51:29Z")
Here’s another clue for you all… [washingtonexaminer.com](http://washingtonexaminer.com) / **opinion** / aoc-compares-border-crisis-to-nazi-germany-as-the-us-gives-free-healthcare-to-illegal-immigrants ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/88 "2019-07-02T18:53:32Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > Because secret groups have uses other than providing a place for people to share their racist feelings. In fact, I suspect most secret groups are not about people sharing their racist feelings. A 'secret group" is one that is invisible to non-members. Non-members won’t see it on searches , and if I join one. my friends won’t be able to see that I am a member. Very useful for planning surprise parties or to have conversations with close family or friends that you don’t necessarily want to share with _their_ friends. > > I can’t understand how anyone can believe a group with 9K plus members is actually “secret” . The way secret groups stay secret is that you can only join if you are invited by a current member- but with that many member, people must have been inviting those they barely knew to join - which of course, is how the group came to light. The TNS group (683 members) doesn’t work that way. I can’t just invite someone. Only the TNS leadership can invite someone who has met the requirements for membership and paid their dues, and they can also expel someone for not paying their renewal dues or (like here) for violating the rules. If Facebook did away with secret groups, we would have to set up our own board, and FB would lose ad revenue. Lose-lose. Never gonna happen. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/89 "2019-07-02T18:54:08Z")
IMHO, when one is reduced to “logically” reducing the number of racists in this agency and parsing the definition of “concentration camps” so that it _doesn’t_ match what is happening here in Texas, one has already lost the factual, moral, and historical argument. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/90 "2019-07-02T18:54:52Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The paper said nothing-a right wing editorial hack said it…which I knew would be the case even before I opened the link. …, Which, was \*published in the Washington Examiner. \* Thereby, they said it. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/91 "2019-07-02T19:00:36Z")
> [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](#): > > This is off-color humor? > > “The page also reportedly includes a photo illustration of Ocasio-Cortez giving oral sex in an immigrant detention center, and another of President Trump shoving her face in his crotch.” > > This is shameful. You’ve an excuse to fire whoever put pornography on a Facebook page. 🙂 We do seem to be sounding like, “Lock them up!” here. I don’t believe guys can or should be fired for being jerks. It is obvious that that boarder guards should be compassionate and should help the people trekking across the desert to get to the relative safety of the United States rather than destroying water caches. They seem to regard themselves as an army defending the USA from commie spies and saboteurs. The guys on that FB page would do better to be in another profession. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/92 "2019-07-02T19:03:25Z")
I would find it interesting if all of the people who said that ‘more funding’ to fix the problems with Trump’s concentration camps in previous threads could explain clearly and succinctly how additional funding would stop the problems exposed by the secret facebook group or shown AOC’s visit to the camps. Somehow though, I think the ‘more funding would fix this’ people won’t have an explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/93 "2019-07-02T19:09:50Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > We do seem to be sounding like, “Lock them up!” here. I don’t believe guys can or should be fired for being jerks. I believe that members of law enforcement should be fired and prosecuted as soon as it is determined that they’re involved in a conspiracy to break the law, including depriving people of human rights. There’s a massive difference between people shouting ‘lock her up’ about Hillary Clinton being careless with emails in a way that multiple politicians on both sides have done and which was since corrected, and people shouting ‘lock them up’ about racist prison guards abusing people under their control. > [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > It’s (at least in part) about whether people should “face recrimination” for exercising their rights to free speech in a way that upsets liberals. Several posters have suggested they deserve to be fired for their membership in a private facebook group that had some posts with off-color humor. At least one poster suggested some of them should be charged criminally. If you can’t see how the example New Zealand has given (where they do actually charge people criminally for politically-incorrect things posted to Facebook) might be relevant to the discussion, I feel pity for you. When people in authority make ‘jokes’ about abusing people and go on to actually abuse people, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in the concentration camps, they are not just ‘exercising their rights to free speech’. Trying to frame posts cheering on the abuse of concentration camp inmates by the people running the camps as a mere ‘free speech’ issue indicates a complete misunderstanding of the very concept of ‘speech’ in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/94 "2019-07-02T19:10:33Z")
Who are these people? Who gets up in the morning and goes off to work in such an environment? Who sees these things and keeps silent? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/95 "2019-07-02T19:14:51Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > The TNS group doesn’t work that way. I can’t just invite someone. Only the TNS leadership can invite someone who has met the requirements for membership and paid their dues, and they can also expel someone for not paying their renewal dues or (like here) for violating the rules. > > If Facebook did away with secret groups, we would have to set up our own board, and FB would lose ad revenue. Lose-lose. Never gonna happen. To my point above. These groups are pretty tightly controlled. It took 9,500 users for the admins to finally make a mistake and allow one “libtard” access. 9,500:1 That’s not a “few bad apples”. That’s not, as the union put it, “members of the public”… implying that randos just came in and did their thing… nothing at all like that. This was a group with a pretty good grasp of the vetting process as this 9,500:1! shows. It’s not a few current agents either, no matter how the concentration camp supporters want to spin this. Even the union agrees, by identifying the group as being broken into “Agents, retired employees, employees who no longer work for CBP…” oh, and “members of the public”\*. Four groups, three of which were/are employees of the CBP\*\*. 9,500 members without a slipup. Amazing. Seriously wonder if someone in the HR department is involved here - **Facebook users** : How do you verify someone’s employment? If I wanted to build a secret group of insurance agents who wanted socialized health insurance (there’s a lot more of us than you think!), how would I verify that someone is not an employee of, say, Humana? And how can I do this to such a degree that it takes 9,500 attempts before I make a mistake and allow someone _not_ aligned with my views to join this group? 9,500:1! That’s fuckin’ amazing. \*Really, those are the names I want. It’s now kinda like the new “Client #3”! \*\* And how do they know the data to make this breakdown? If it were me writing this thing, I would have said “a few bad apples unknown to us” not “well, statistically, you can put the users into _these_ four broad categories…” ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/96 "2019-07-02T19:21:53Z")
I am not entirely up on this, perhaps someone else knows. Was there a recent uptick in hiring Border Patrol personnel? Will the recent addition of funding advance and enhance such efforts? ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/97 "2019-07-02T19:26:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Which, was \*published in the Washington Examiner. \* Thereby, they said it. [This](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=21623173#post21623173) again? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/98 "2019-07-02T19:27:29Z")
At a minimum, if something like this occurred at any workplace I’ve been, it would be a violation of policies against hostile work environments. They need to wholesale clean house at CBP and if they can’t be fired, then removing the offenders from contact with other humans in any capacity should be done. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/99 "2019-07-02T19:31:22Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Who are these people? Who gets up in the morning and goes off to work in such an environment? Who sees these things and keeps silent? People who believe they are prison guards for very nasty people. It seem strange to me that seeing small children thirsty and cold that none of these people brought water and blankets. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358/100 "2019-07-02T19:33:31Z")
I love threads that show SDMB irrationality. Let’s inject a little logic and facts: 1. Facebook Group membership is generally quite casual, this group has existed for three years and has reportedly 9,500 members. It is a fallacy to assume that all 9,500 support a series of offensive posts made by a small handful of the group’s members. Now, since whoever runs the group didn’t moderate/remove them, we can assume those posts had some level of “institutional” support. But we can’t even presume that a significant percentage of the 9,500 posters have even read the post, or even looked at the group’s messages **in years**. I’m part of a few local neighborhood groups on Facebook, I barely use the platform, and go months without logging in and checking it out. It’s possible any number of things are said in those community groups of which I’m never aware. 2. We have no idea how many member are actually active CBP employees versus former versus never worked for CBP in any fashion vs Russian trolls etc. 3. It stands to reason, as other law enforcement has been found in small numbers to have links to extremists, that some CBP officers are racist bigots and are deliberately expressing themselves as such. We don’t have enough actual information to know what percentage are. 4. CBP officers are civil servants. It’s quite frankly illegal to fire them for being members of a Facebook group. If some of them posted things that would go against civil service regulations, or would constitute crimes, they should be fired and prosecuted. Not being super familiar with the civil service codes I don’t know if any of these do, but I am fairly certain none of the posts constitute crimes at all. 5. Border Patrol facilities are not concentration camps. It’s imbecilic to say they are. Nazi Germany specifically concentrated and shipped undesirables to concentration camps from all over the country, against their will. The vast, vast majority of asylum seeking refugees are willingly crossing the border and surrendering to border patrol, in spite of widespread knowledge that it will entail at least temporary detention. These people want to be here and that makes it dramatically different from concentration camps. 6. The political Trump Administration made a series of decisions that required holding persons at a much greater rate in HHS and Border Patrol facilities, due to a simplistic opposition to what was deemed “catch and release” (simplistic because this is the outcome of not doing C&R), to have implemented this plan without causing a humanitarian crisis would have required substantial build out of Border Patrol infrastructure and significant additional funding. The Trump Admin went ahead with it without securing either of those things. They are to blame for the humanitarian issues. Border Patrol agents have little mechanism to fix this issue and bear little direct blame. If any of them are acting criminally on an individual basis, they should be punished. In the sake of the children, due to the requirement Border Patrol has to treat them as unaccompanied if they are not with their legal guardians, BP really can’t just not house these kids. It would be immoral to just release children by themselves onto the streets of America, so they have no legal or even moral alternative given the legal constraints, to holding them until they can be moved to HHS. The attacks on ICE and CBP are retarded and political, much like AOC and the people who think she’s some sort of paragon of virtue. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secret-border-patrol-facebook-page/836358.md?page=6)