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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/2990090/top-border- patrol-officials-say-biden-appointees-silenced-them-years/

EXCLUSIVE — The recently retired second in command of the U.S. Border
Patrol said the Biden administration intentionally blocked him and others
from engaging with the public, enacting robust protocols to sabotage media requests as millions surged across the southern border.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, recently retired Border
Patrol Deputy Chief Matthew Hudak spoke out for the first time since his departure and accused White House appointees within the Department of
Homeland Security of policing the police's media presence.

"Dealing with this tidal wave of humanity that was hitting our border on a daily basis — very quickly, news stories, statements being put out
condemning our agents, being critical of their efforts, spread like
wildfire, and we had our hands tied behind our back and were unable to
counter or respond to any of that with the actual facts," Hudak said in
the May interview.

Hudak is one of three current and former senior federal law enforcement officials at the top of the 20,000-employee organization who told the Washington Examiner that they believe they were purposely kept out of the public eye at the White House's order.

"We aren't allowed to speak to media without HQ approval. It is almost
always denied," said one of the senior officials, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity. "Office of Public Affairs at HQ. They have final
say on all media engagements. Before that, the sector chiefs had that
ability."

Rodney Scott, the former Border Patrol chief, said in an interview that
they were forced to stay out of sight when the border fell into crisis.
More than 10 million people have been observed illegally entering the
United States since Biden's first day in office.

"The Trump administration came in, and they actually expanded and freed up communication significantly," said Scott, who led the organization under
the Trump and Biden administrations. "It was a very, very decisive, like 180-degree turn with the Biden administration. ... But all national media
has been restricted. I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody."

The transition from former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden
was a "180-degree" shift, according to Scott.

Trump ushered in border 'transparency'
In the months leading up to the 2020 election, Hudak was chief of one of
the 22 sectors the Border Patrol divides the northern, southern, and
coastal borders into. He was no stranger to local and national media and
had done in-person interviews in his Texas region with CNN and Fox News.

Facilitating media was a "relatively straightforward, easy process and
done very frequently," said Hudak, a 26-year agent.

"There was a process of notification if we were going to do on-camera interviews with local media, regional, or national. But I don't recall one
of those being denied when I was the acting chief in Del Rio Sector or
chief in two other sectors," Hudak said. "It was pretty seamless and a
great opportunity for us to answer questions that were out there."

Scott was national chief of the Border Patrol under Trump in 2020 and for
the first six months of the Biden administration in 2021.

Early in the Trump administration, Scott had met with Trump when he
traveled to San Diego, California, to see the prototypes for border wall construction projects.

"He's just like, 'This is a government Border Patrol agent that — he has
no reason to lie. He's just telling me what works and what doesn't work.'
And then said, 'Go tell America,'" Scott said. "That was repeated
throughout the entire time that I was both a sector chief and the chief of
the Border Patrol. ... The direction I got from the Trump administration
was, 'America needs to know what's going on.'"

With support from Trump's political appointees at the Department of
Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Border
Patrol had each of its 22 regions create social media accounts to post regularly about the work of agents in each zone, including arrests of gang members, drug smugglers, and other criminals.

"We built structures, and we built processes to tell America," Scott said. "There weren't a lot of talking points that came down. It wasn't like a scripted message, per se. It was just, 'Make sure that you're
communicating.'"

CBP paid to have senior leadership employees take social media and media engagement courses to learn how to message and post content, Scott said.

Scott also pointed to monthly in-person border briefing press conferences
in Washington in which he and the CBP commissioner announced monthly
arrest numbers and fielded questions.

"No one was worried about anybody giving out information that, you know,
made the administration look bad because that wasn't the point. It was
about facts and transparency and truth," Scott said.

The Biden transition
In one of the most aggressive policy pivots between presidential administrations, Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021, and signed executive orders undoing numerous immigration policies Trump had put into place, following through on a campaign promise to expand pathways for migrants to
seek asylum.

Each president appoints executive office employees in departments and
agencies. They advise career employees like Hudak and Scott of the White House's wishes.

Biden's political appointees at the DHS immediately clashed with career officials, Scott said.

"The new chief of staff for CBP walked into the building. Her name was
Lise Clavel — kind of laid down the law," Scott said. "One of the first
things that they rolled out was that she will be managing all public
relations, all media, and that we needed to go through her for approvals."

Biden's political appointees to the DHS and CBP introduced guidelines on
when, where, and with whom executives at Border Patrol were allowed to
speak. They were not put out in written form, according to Hudak.

Under Biden, requests from media to speak with Border Patrol agents like
Hudak and Scott would be sent from the press office to be decided by
Biden's political appointees.

"The requests were very rarely ever denied, but it would be up until a
short time before the interview, 'No, we're still waiting for approval,'"
Hudak said. "Those things would never happen at that point. That would be
a wave-off usually by the media side of, 'We can't hold an interview slot indefinitely.'"

Hudak was promoted in December 2021 from a chief in the field to second in command at the national headquarters. He said interviews with media while
in the field and at headquarters stopped once Biden took office.

"That was even a little bit more frustrating. The sentiment was: 'There's
no gag order. We're not preventing anybody from talking, but we have to
approve every request,'" Hudak said. "Not being allowed is, frankly, the
same as being denied."

The third official said the crackdown turned the Biden administration into
the "least transparent administration we have ever experienced."

Scott claimed that the clampdown on Border Patrol was intentional and
based on political appointees' vendetta for the organization.

"Based on my face-to-face conversations with these people for about seven months — actually longer than that because several of them participated in
the transition ... a significant portion of the individuals that came in
under the Biden administration hated the Border Patrol," Scott said. "[DHS Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy Blas Nuñez-Neto]
told me to my face that 'we do not like the Border Patrol. We do not trust
the Border Patrol.'"

Axios reported last week that the White House is preparing to bring Nuñez-
Neto over from the DHS ahead of the election.

Hudak declined to comment about his experience working with Nuñez-Neto.

"I remember my deputy chief coming back ... from a meeting with Lise
Clavel about messaging, about communication, just completely frustrated
because we had a proposed press release. And again, it's just very
factual," Scott recounted. "They were pushing back on that, 'Why do you,
why do you have to talk about criminals crossing the border? Why do you
have to talk about the gang members?' And we're like, 'We're just
reporting what is going on — the totality of what's going on.'"

Scott said Biden officials communicated to career law enforcement
officials that they did "not want" illegal migrants "portrayed as
terrorists." The number of suspected and known terrorists arrested at the border has gone from a handful per year before Biden to more than 160 last year, per CBP data.

"No one was trying to portray anything. CBP was trying to report what they
did with taxpayers' money," Scott said. "Anything that had to do with
actual, like criminals crossing the border, threats, anything that we were
just normally pushing out, we weren't getting approval."

Clavel, Scott said, would go between the White House and CBP for approval
on border-related communications.

"They don't like our messaging. They don't want to talk about border
threats," Scott said.

A DHS spokesperson said the assertions were "categorically false."

"A/S Nuñez-Neto has the highest respect and admiration for the U.S. Border Patrol and their dedication to the security of our borders and our
country, and has consistently demonstrated that respect over the past two decades of his work on these challenging issues," the DHS spokesperson
said. "Ms. Clavel is also a longtime public servant and holds the deepest respect for the U.S. Border Patrol, and consistently advocated for them
during her time as a senior leader in the Administration."

Fielding a crisis
Border Patrol's inability to speak with national media occurred amid extraordinary circumstances.

Border Patrol agents on the southern border saw an increase in the number
of migrants caught illegally entering the country shortly after Biden took office in January 2021. In a matter of weeks, the number of people
intercepted by agents skyrocketed from 70,000 per month to topping
200,000.

"The next thing we knew, we're catching, you know, 11,000 a day. Unheard
of, right? And this just beat the agents down, and they don't see anybody giving them top cover at all. They don't see anybody advocating for them," Scott said.

Scott was forced out in mid-2021 after he penned a letter to superiors
coming out against the Biden administration's internal order for agents
not to call migrants arrested at the border "illegal aliens," a term used
in federal statute that Congress wrote into law decades ago.

Scott's successor, Chief Raul Ortiz, was kept out of the spotlight and
only appeared before national media but in the presence of Biden officials
who often occupied the podium.

"They never let him to just go on his own. It's always a political
appointee standing right beside him, or they would usually have Secretary Mayorkas or somebody else talking and then just have Raul standing behind
him for credibility," Scott said. "He was never allowed to speak, either —
not freely."

Ortiz declined to comment.

A CBP spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the agency "is
committed to transparency with stakeholders and the public that we serve
and view public communication as a key part of our national security and
public safety missions."

"These assertions are false, as evidenced by CBP senior career leaders' frequent media engagements and daily social media posts," the CBP
spokesperson said.

Del Rio 'whipping' incident
Despite CBP's claim, rank-and-file Border Patrol agents have felt
abandoned, particularly as incidents involving Border Patrol occurred and
no one spoke out in their defense.

In the wake of the September 2021 incident in which agents on horseback
were photographed trying to deter Haitian men from coming onto U.S. soil
in Del Rio, Texas, Biden officials immediately made statements that
painted agents as guilty of whipping migrants.

Biden told reporters that illegal immigrants were "being strapped" in an "outrageous" way and vowed, "Those people [Border Patrol] will pay."
Agents were later vindicated, but Hudak said it was an example of not
being allowed to explain how horses are used, that agents are not even
issued whips, and the circumstances in which the horses were deployed.
That lack of information being shared publicly left agents looking guilty
in the court of public opinion.

Hudak and Scott pointed to the social media pages that each region
maintains as Border Patrol's only public-facing outlet — one that has
managed to slip under the radar, likely because of how small a following
they have.

"I'm probably taking a risk that this administration will kill that, too,
by talking about this openly. The only place America is still getting
factual information about what's going on on the border is through those
sector chiefs' local social media accounts," Scott said. "Written in
policy, by the way, they have the authority to push out that local
information, what's going on in the local area."

Scott also lamented that the effort to be transparent with and available
to national media through a monthly press conference in Washington had
been done away with.

"They roll out the numbers now at, like, midnight on a Friday, three weeks
into the next month. And then, they try to downplay the numbers and try to explain them away," Scott said.

To him, silencing the Border Patrol leadership during the crisis hurt
morale, as has been documented in verbal confrontations between Ortiz and agents during meetings.

"If you really don't like this organization, and you want to create havoc
or damage, actually trashing the morale, whether intentional or not, is
not a bad thing," Scott said. "The Border Patrol feels like — they're just like, 'We feel like we're part of the smuggling network.'"

"I say all that to say, did it backfire? Or did they intentionally destroy
it," Scott said.

CBP maintained that Border Patrol leaders "can and do conduct interviews regularly, which are available online from various news stations and
websites."

The White House, Nuñez-Neto, and Clavel did not respond to requests for comment.


--
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.

No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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