White House imposes gag order on border agents
JAZZ SHAW 2:01 PM on December 22, 2022
AP Photo/Christian Chavez, File
The issues on the border between Mexico and the United States have long since reached crisis proportions. The crisis will increase significantly if either Congress or the Supreme Court doesn’t find a way to keep Title 42 in place for a while longer. So how will the Biden administration address this problem and solve it? Like any true leader facing a daunting challenge, Joe Biden leaped into action and ordered all officers from Customs and Border Protection to stop talking to reporters or publishing illegal immigration figures on social media. Yes, you read that correctly. Joe Biden is going to “fix” the border crisis by placing a gag order on the Border Patrol. (Free Beacon)
The Biden administration on Monday barred Customs and Border Protection officials from sharing information about the magnitude of illegal border crossings at the southern border without approval from the Department of Homeland Security, Breitbart reported.
The gag order points to the possible end of Title 42, a Trump-era rule that allowed agents to turn illegal immigrants away because of the pandemic, as reason to limit information coming from the border. The Biden administration’s directive specifically bans CBP officials from sharing data with media outlets as tens of thousands of migrants amass at the southern border.
Such an order is unprecedented as agencies post statistics frequently, Breitbart reported.
Yes, “unprecedented” is certainly the word for this. And there’s a reason that no president before Joe Biden tried to quash communications with the press and the public about illegal border crossing numbers. This is a public safety issue. Particularly for people living in communities along the border, knowing when and where the streams of migrants, drug mules, and human traffickers are crossing into the country allows them to be on alert. This information is also very useful to law enforcement agencies.
The fact that this order was not released publicly and had to be leaked suggests that at least someone inside the Biden Administration knows just how wrong this is. And Biden’s team probably just assumed that most of the media would meekly go along with keeping a lid on the news. Sadly, that was almost certainly a correct assumption. I just did a scan of all of the news feeds and the only mentions of this are in conservative outlets and Fox News. There’s nothing at CNN, MSNBC, or any of the alphabet networks.
Of course, those with good memories will recall that this isn’t the first time that the Biden administration has sought to put a gag on the Border Patrol. Barely two months after taking office, as Biden’s open border policies launched the flood of illegals coming across the border, Biden’s team sent down orders limiting what could be said or where cameras could film activity near the border. (Shockingly, NBC News actually covered the story back then.) Back then they didn’t put the order in the form of a written memo that could be leaked out, however. They sent the orders down the chain of command verbally.
Now Biden is being more bold and making this official policy. But just as we saw in March of 2021, the approach being taken by the White House is the same. A serious problem emerges and rather than trying to find a solution, they try to stop people from finding out about it. But it’s not going to work. The word is already getting out and the dishonest actors in the Biden administration need to be held to account.
Home 
