LUBBOCK, Texas–The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) fired back against the left-of-center American Immigration Council (AIC) over a report that largely used unsubstantiated claims and out of context numbers to attack the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol agency.
Breitbart Texas covered the AIC report previously, as well as other left-of-center efforts to attack the Border Patrol and the agency’s ability to perform its mission.
The NBPC wrote in a statement, “The National Border Patrol Council, representing 17,000 United States Border Patrol agents, takes issue with the study conducted by the American Immigration Council alleging that Border Patrol agents are abusing illegal aliens and that Customs and Border Protection is turning a blind eye.”
The statement continued, “The American Immigration Council study showed that 809 complaints were lodged from January 2009 to January 2012. During that period, Border Patrol agents made over 1.5 million arrests, for a rate of one allegation for every 2000 arrests.”
As previously reported on Breitbart Texas, “AIC looked at 809 complaints filed against the U.S. Border Patrol over the last three years, from January 2009 through January 2012. Many of the complaints are supposedly related to alleged physical or verbal abuse.”
Sylvia Longmire, Breitbart Texas’ contributing editor and border security expert. contributed to the above mentioned report and stated, ” … given the large number of apprehensions by Border Patrol agents each year, 809 complaints is not as significant of a figure as the AIC probably wants readers to think.”
In addition to pushing unsubstantiated allegations against Border Patrol agents and failing to put the number of complaints in context with the number of arrests made, the AIC report did not provide any data of the issuers of the complaints and whether they had been previously convicted of other crimes or of previously disproven complaints. Any and all relevant data report readers would need to ascertain the credibility of the individuals making complaints were absent.
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Breitbart Texas has included the full response from the National Border Patrol Council below.
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