Follow up to CBP Murdered Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis MN on January 24, 2026 [Note – Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting. The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez] See also this extensive report by Garrett Graff: However bad you think the corruption and misconduct at ICE and CBP is — the reality is far far worse. Criminality is so rampant inside CBP that it has seen one of its own agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005. CBP’s misconduct scandal is so long-running that today it would be old enough to drink. In total, according to CBP’s own discipline reports, over the 20 years from 2005 to 2024 — the last year numbers are available — at least 4,913 CBP officers and Border Patrol agents have been arrested themselves, some multiple times. (In 2018 alone, a single CBP employee was arrested five times.) To put that number in perspective:
- The population of CBP agents and officers who have been arrested would make it roughly the nation’s fourth largest police department — equal to the size of the entire Philadelphia police.
- Indeed, for much of the 2010s and likely before and since, it appears the crime rate of CBP agents and offices was higher PER CAPITA than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States…In particular, CBP has been likely the deadliest and certainly the most troubled federal law enforcement agency for the better part of two decades now. Since 9/11, the culture of ICE and CBP has meant that the agencies have been what you might call a fascist-secret-police-in-waiting, troubled agencies simply waiting for an ambitious would-be authoritarian…
- CBP — the nation’s largest law enforcement agency — has been plagued for two decades by a tidal wave of crime, corruption, and misconduct driven by a disastrous post-9/11 hiring surge that flooded the force with thousands of agents and officers who never should have been given a badge and a gun — including, as one CBP commissioner told me, even accidentally hiring members of actual drug cartels…
- the way that the funding for ICE has been allocated, it can spend this money straight through 2029…”
- See also The New York Times: “A proposal in a 1987 law review article could address a gap that makes it all but impossible to sue federal officials for violating the Constitution. The key to holding Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents accountable for constitutional violations may lie in a 1987 law review article by a young law professor named Akhil Reed Amar. “I think it was a good idea then,” he said last week, “and it’s only taken more than half a lifetime for people to actually read the thing.” The article has, in truth, been quite influential. It has been cited, for instance, in seven Supreme Court opinions. But it was also 96 pages long and touched on many issues…”
- See also The New York Times Gift Article – Opinion Guest Essay, author of Nobody Is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States. The Border Patrol Is the Problem. It Always Has Been. “The violence, racial profiling and disregard for the Constitution that have burst into public view in Minneapolis are not new or unusual for the Border Patrol. This is how the agency has operated since it was created, though for decades those activities have been hidden in the remote borderlands. If you are uncomfortable with what the Border Patrol is doing in Minneapolis, you are uncomfortable with the Border Patrol, full stop…”
- See also The New York Times Gift Article – ICE is Watching You: “Trump’s signature domestic policy bill gave ICE $75 billion in new funding and four years to spend it, making ICE the highest funded federal law enforcement agency. The agency is spending big on signing bonuses — 12,000 new officers and agents have been hired with One Big Beautiful Bill money — and cutting-edge military weaponry to use on American streets. The Department of Homeland Security also has been, reportedly, spending some of its budget to collect data on people like you…”
