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Border Patrol should not be held responsible for deaths following harrowing journey | Opinion

U.S. Border Patrol agents have rescued more than 4,000 sick or injured people in the past year alone, by the government’s official count. Now liberals are demonizing them over the few lives they couldn’t save.

A migrant girl holds her doll as she climbs the U.S. border fence before jumping into the U.S. side to San Diego, Calif., from Tijuana, Mexico, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2018. Discouraged by the long wait to apply for asylum through official ports of entry, many Central American migrants from recent caravans are choosing to cross the U.S. border wall and hand themselves into border patrol agents.
A migrant girl holds her doll as she climbs the U.S. border fence before jumping into the U.S. side to San Diego, Calif., from Tijuana, Mexico, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2018. Discouraged by the long wait to apply for asylum through official ports of entry, many Central American migrants from recent caravans are choosing to cross the U.S. border wall and hand themselves into border patrol agents.Read moreDaniel Ochoa de Olza / AP
    by Brandon Judd, for the Inquirer, For The Inquirer
    Published 

The brave men and women who protect our borders don’t deserve the vilification they get from the mainstream media.

Instead, they should be praised for saving thousands of lives and stopping thousands of people from illegally entering the country. Sadly, the press cares more about promoting the Democrat agenda than reporting the truth.

In fact, U.S. Border Patrol agents have rescued more than 4,000 sick or injured people in the past year alone, by the government’s official count. Now liberals are demonizing them over the few lives they couldn’t save.

When the mainstream media and talking heads learned about a girl’s death in U.S. custody in early December, they wasted no time in politicizing the tragedy by pinning the blame on the Border Patrol and President Trump.

>> READ MORE: Stop treating America’s border like a crime scene. It’s a humanitarian crisis | Will Bunch

In reality, though, U.S. officials did everything possible to save the girl’s life. Rather than the cause being connected to any sort of mistreatment by the Border Patrol, the girl’s death was likely the result of her grueling journey to the border — a dangerous undertaking that no child should be forced to endure.

The rigors of that trek almost certainly contributed to the death of a second child a few weeks later. While the exact cause of death has yet to be determined, an autopsy revealed that the 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in a U.S. hospital was sick with the flu.

In a Facebook statement addressing the tragic incident, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explained that the girl received emergency medical treatment from Border Patrol officials, noting that the child completed “a days-long, dangerous journey through remote and barren terrain” during which she had “not been able to consume water or food ... .”

This is not the first time the mainstream media have unfairly critiqued our brave Border Patrol agents who put their lives on the line to keep our communities safe and discourage illegal cross-border treks through the barren desert.

In a fiery exchange with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin in June, Chris Cabrera, a spokesperson for the National Border Patrol Council, passionately defended the Trump administration’s tough — but ultimately compassionate — immigration policies.

“When you see a 12-year-old girl with a plan B pill, her parents put her on birth control because they know getting violated is part of the journey, that’s a terrible way to live,” he told Baldwin. “When you see a 4-year-old girl traveling alone with just her parents’ phone number written across her shirt. We had a 9-year-old boy have heat stroke in front of us and die with no family around. That’s because we’re allowing people to take advantage of this system.”

Contrary to the mainstream media narrative, Border Patrol agents do many great things for our country, and save the lives of migrants every year. Sadly, most of these heroic acts only get reported by small local outlets, if they ever get covered at all.

In July, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that Border Patrol agents rescued “406 people from possible death due to soaring temperatures along the Southwest border” in just the first two months of summer. In August, Border Patrol agents rescued three families from the Rio Grande River, saving multiple people from drowning in the current.

It’s unfair and unfortunate, but thanks to the mainstream media and its liberal agenda, most Americans have probably never heard of these heroic deeds. Instead, we’re fed a stream of incomplete news stories intended to villainize the brave immigration officials who save thousands of lives while performing the vital function of keeping our communities safe.

If the Democrats and the press truly care about improving the conditions at the border, they should support President Trump’s call to build a wall and strengthen border security so that we can deter people from embarking on the life-threatening quest to illegally enter our country.

Brandon Judd is the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the exclusive labor union of about 16,000 Border Patrol agents.