🧵Let me tell y’all a little story about how the Border Patrol manipulates to create crisis scenarios. It was 2000, and I was a Senior Patrol agent in Campo, CA. The Border Patrol wanted Bush to win, but illegal crossings were way down. They couldn’t create more crossings.

2) So, they started having agents keep track of how many “got aways” were occurring. If I tracked a group and lost them, I should document the number I thought got away. We never did this before. The effect was to make the Patrol appear to need more resources. Bush was the one

3) they believed would do that. Border was out of control because Clinton didn’t do enough and Gore who ran against Bush would do the same. When Trump was potus, and they crammed migrants into cells at Border Patrol stations...remember that? https://t.co/J6q4MahNWE

4) Remember how they kept migrants in those cells for over 2 weeks? I went to El Paso, and I went to my old station, Campo. After introducing myself as a former agent & threw in some BP terms, I asked why they were doing this. I knew processing didn’t take that long.

5) Every single agent said to me that they were intentionally slow-walking the processing to create a backlog. They wanted to punish them. They wanted to make them give up & take a deport. They wanted them to call home & tell their families not to come.

6) They saw this unwritten order as something they must do to prevent more people from coming to claim asylum. It was another way to deter immigration. They created that crisis. Right now, they are creating another crisis with unaccompanied kids, & another one by

7) using this “got aways” count, @GovAbbott’s false claims and Republican lies because their numbers do not support their claims. https://t.co/Cyw2fzc8eU

8) That’s the story here. Any outlet...right, left or middle who does not call them on this is just helping them. These are people we are talking about. I think many of us have forgotten about this. They have dreams. They love. They breath just like you and I.

9) I think I just said the quiet part out loud.