Unanimous no-confidence vote
By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com
Fed up with what they see as poor management and a lack of support for those on the frontline, U.S. Border Patrol agents Monday announced a lack of confidence in their leadership.
Amid rallies in Washington D.C. focusing on illegal immigration, leaders of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) – the union representing the country’s 11,000 non-supervisory border agents – announced it had cast a unanimous no-confidence vote in U.S. Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar.
The 100-0 vote stemmed from complaints that field agents lack support from the top, a situation they say is exemplified by the case of two agents in Texas, jailed after shooting a Mexican trying to bring drugs into the country.The resolution cited the chief’s willingness to believe what it called the “perjured allegations” of criminal aliens over his own agents.
“All these are working agents,” NBPC President T.J. Bonner told Cybercast News Service, speaking of the 100 union leaders that voted. “They’ve been out there talking to agents in the field. This vote is born of extreme frustration. The only surprise is that it took this long to boil to the surface.”
Earlier this year, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean began prison terms of more than a decade each for shooting Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, a Mexican national who was trying to smuggle drugs across the border. Prosecutors gave Aldrete-Davila immunity to return to the United States and testify against the border agents.
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