A second secret Facebook group connected to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency has been discovered, and it is just as filled with vulgar, misogynistic, and racist posts as the one found earlier this week, CNN reported.
The group, called "The Real CBP Nation," has around 1,000 members. Posts reviewed by CNN include a meme of Border Patrol agents detaining a migrant with the text, "Feeling kinda cute, might separate some families today IDK," several sexist and demeaning posts about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and images mocking Black and Asian people.
On Monday, ProPublica reported on a similar secret group made up of nearly 9,500 current and former Border Patrol agents, which was found to be filled with more sexist memes about Ocasio-Cortez and jokes about the deaths of Central American migrants. Following the discovery, CBP launched an investigation into the group.
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This is not the first time CBP agents have faced claims of racism and xenophobia. A 2018 federal investigation found that agents in southern Arizona described migrants as "guats," "wild ass shitbags," "mindless murdering savages," "beaners," and "subhuman" on a group chat. One of the agents, Matthew Bowen, was charged in 2018 with hitting a Guatemalan migrant with his truck and then lying about it on his incident report.
Border Patrol leadership has known about these groups since at least 2016, Politico reported. In February 2018, CBP issued a memo warning employees that social media misconduct could lead to disciplinary action. "The bottom line is the Agency may bring discipline against an employee who posts offensive messages on a social media page where there is a nexus to the Agency workplace," the memo, obtained by CNN, reads. It's unclear whether any agency employee has ever faced consequences over social media posts that violate CBP's anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies.
In recent weeks, the agency has received widespread condemnation over the treatment of migrant children in its custody. Advocates, lawmakers, and historians have gone so far as to compare immigration detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border to "concentration camps." According to media reports and attorneys' testimonies, migrant children in some of these facilities have gone weeks without access to adequate food, space to sleep, or even basic hygiene necessities such as soap or toothpaste, which is in direct violation of the 1997 Flores settlement agreement.
Earlier this week, a congressional visit to detention centers holding migrant adults showed that conditions are no better for them — with no running water available, agents reportedly told the women to drink from toilets. Ocasio-Cortez and several other Democrats — including Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib; Texas Reps. Joaquín Castro, Veronica Escobar, and Sylvia Garcia; California Reps. Judy Chu and Norma Torres; Massachusetts Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Lori Trahan, and Joe Kennedy; and Pennsylvania Rep. Madeleine Dean — strongly condemned the conditions in the detention centers during the visit.