EXCLUSIVE: The recently retired second in command of the U.S. Border Patrol claimed that the Biden presidency purposefully prevented him and others from speaking with the general public, passing strict rules to destroy advertising demands as people crossed the southern border.
In an appointment with the Washington Examiner, just retired Border Patrol Deputy Chief Matthew Hudak spoke out for the first day since his exit and accused White House officials within the Department of Homeland Security of policing the officer’s internet presence.
We had our arms tied behind our backs and were unable to shop or respond to any of the tidal wave of civilization that was hitting our boundary on a daily basis, according to Hudak in the May meeting.
Hudak is one of three current and former top federal law enforcement officials at the top of the 20, 000- individual business who told the Washington Examiner that they believe they were actively kept out of the public gaze at the White House’s purchase.
Without HQ’s approval, we are not permitted to speak to the media. One of the senior officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that it is “almost always denied”. ” Office of Public Affairs at HQ. They have the final say in all media appearances. The sector leaders had that capability prior to that.
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. Since Biden took office, more than 10 million people have been caught entering the country without authorization.
Under the Trump and Biden administrations, Scott, who led the organization, reported that” the Trump administration came in, and they actually expanded and freed up communication significantly.” ” It was a very, very decisive, like 180- degree turn with the Biden administration. …but there is no access to all of the national media. I was denied access to anyone’s conversation.
The transition from former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden was a” 180- degree” shift, according to Scott.
Trump ushered in” transparence” on the border.
In the months leading up to the 2020 election, Hudak held the position of head of one of the 22 sectors that Border Patrol divides into: coastal, southern, and northern. He was no stranger to local and national media and had done in- person interviews in his Texas region with CNN and Fox News.
According to Hudak, a 26-year agent, media facilitation was “relatively straightforward, easy process, and done very frequently.”
” There was a process of notification if we were going to do on- camera interviews with local media, regional, or national. However, I ca n’t recall one of those being denied while Del Rio Sector ’s acting chief or in two other sectors, Hudak said. ” It was pretty seamless and gave us a great opportunity to answer questions,” he said.
Scott was national chief of the Border Patrol under Trump in 2020 and for the first six months of the Biden administration in 2021.
When Scott met with Trump at the beginning of the Trump administration, they discussed how to build the border wall prototypes.
He responds,” This is a government Border Patrol agent that has no reason to lie,” to which he goes on. He’s just telling me what works and what does n’t work.’ And then he said,” Go tell America,” Scott said. That was repeated throughout my tenure as a Border Patrol sector chief and border patrol chief. … The direction I got from the Trump administration was,’ America needs to know what’s going on.'”
The Border Patrol set up social media accounts for each of its 22 regions to post regularly updates on the work of agents in each zone, including arrests of gang members, drug smugglers, and other criminals, with the help of Trump’s political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
According to Scott,” We built processes and structures, and we built processes.”  ,” There were n’t a lot of talking points that came down. It was n’t exactly a scripted message. Simply put,” Make sure you’re communicating.”
According to Scott, CBP paid to have senior management take courses on how to message and post content on social media and in media engagement.
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.
Because that was n’t the point, no one was concerned about anyone disclosing information that, you know, made the administration appear bad. According to Scott, it was about truth and transparency.
The Biden transition
On January 20, 2021, Biden took office in one of the most divisive policy transitions, signing executive orders to end numerous immigration measures that Trump had in place, and signing a campaign pledge to expand the number of asylum seekers who can apply for asylum.
In departments and organizations, each president appoints executive office employees. They advise career employees like Hudak and Scott of the White House’s wishes.
According to Scott, Biden’s political appointees at DHS immediately sparked an argument with career officials.
” The new CBP chief of staff entered the building.” Her name was Lise Clavel — kind of laid down the law”, Scott said. She will be in charge of all media and public relations, and they first made it clear that we needed to go through her for approvals.
When, where, and with whom executives from Border Patrol were permitted to speak, were established by Biden’s political appointees to DHS and CBP. They were not put out in written form, according to Hudak.
Press office requests from the media to speak with Border Patrol agents like Hudak and Scott would be decided by Biden’s political appointees.
The requests were hardly ever denied, but it would n’t be until a few days before the interview to say,” No, we’re still waiting for approval,” Hudak said. At that point,” Those things would never occur.” That would be a wave- off usually by the media side of,’ We ca n’t hold an interview slot indefinitely.'”
Hudak was promoted from the position of chief of field to second-in-command at the national headquarters in December 2021. He claimed that once Biden took office, interviews with reporters conducted on-the-ground and in-house were stopped.
” That was even a little bit more frustrating. There was no gag order, the saying went. We do n’t restrict anyone from speaking, Hudak said, but we must approve each request. ” Not being allowed is, frankly, the same as being denied”.
According to the third official, the administration under the Biden administration has become the “least transparent administration we have ever experienced.”
Scott claimed that the Border Patrol crackdown was intended and was motivated by political appointees ‘ hatred 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. Blas Nuez-Neto, the assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the DHS, said in front of my face,” We do not like the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol is not trustworthy,” We do n’t trust them.”
A senior official claims that the White House wants to replace Nuez-Neto with the DHS ahead of the election.
Hudak declined to comment on his interaction with Nuez-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. It’s just very factual, Scott continued. Why do you, why do you have to talk about criminals crossing the border, they said,” They were pushing back on that.” Why do you have to talk about the gang members?’ And we’re like,” We’re just reporting the totality of what’s happening,” we say.
According to Scott, Biden officials told career law enforcement that they did not want illegal immigrants who had been “described 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 attempted to depict anything in this video. According to Scott, CBP was attempting to report what they had done with taxpayer funds. ” Anything that had to do with actual, like criminals crossing the border, threats, anything that we were just normally pushing out, we were n’t getting approval”.
According to Scott, Clavel would request approval for border-related communications between the White House and CBP.
They disapprove of our messaging. They do n’t want to talk about border threats”, Scott said.
The claims were” categorically false,” according to a DHS spokesman.
The DHS spokesperson stated that A/S Nuez-Neto has the highest respect and admiration for the U.S. Border Patrol and their commitment to protecting our borders and our nation over the past 20 years. ” 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”.
attempting to resolve a crisis
Special circumstances prevented the Border Patrol from speaking with the media.
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 just a few weeks, the number of people who were interrogated by agents rose from 70, 000 monthly to over 200, 000.
We are catching 11, 000 a day right away, as we soon knew. Unheard of, right? And this only served to intimidate the agents, who are completely unaware of anyone giving them top cover. Nobody seems to be speaking up 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.
Chief Raul Ortiz, Scott’s replacement, was kept hidden from the public and only spoke in front of Biden officials, who frequently took the podium.
” They never permitted him to leave on his own.” According to Scott, there is always a political appointee standing right in front of him, or they would typically have Raul standing next to him for credibility while Secretary Mayorkas or someone else is speaking. ” He was never allowed to speak, either — not freely”.
Ortiz opted not to comment.
The organization “is committed to transparency with stakeholders and the public that we serve,” according to a CBP spokesperson, who stated this to the Washington Examiner.
” These assertions are false, as evidenced by CBP senior career leaders ‘ frequent media engagements and daily social media posts”, the CBP spokesperson said.
” Wiping” incident at Del Rio
Ranging-and-file Border Patrol agents have felt abandoned, especially as Border Patrol incidents have occurred and no one has stepped up to defend their claim.
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”. Later, agents were vindicated, but Hudak claimed it was an example of how agents were not even given whips and the circumstances surrounding the horses ‘ deployment. Agents appeared guilty in court of public opinion because of the lack of information being made available.
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.
By talking about this in secret, I’m probably risking that this administration will kill that, too. According to Scott, the only source of factual information about what’s happening on the border is through those sector chiefs’ local social media accounts. ” 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 lamented that national media had been made aware of and made aware of the lack of transparency through a monthly press conference in Washington.
” They roll out the numbers now at, like, midnight on a Friday, three weeks into the next month. Then, they try to explain the numbers away and then try to downplay them,” said Scott.
According to Ortiz, silencing the Border Patrol leadership during a crisis affects morale, as evidenced by verbal altercations between Ortiz and agents during meetings.
” If you really do n’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 appears to be responding with,” We feel like we’re part of the smuggling network.”
” All that said, did it backfire,” I ask? Or did they intentionally destroy it”, Scott said.
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According to CBP, Border Patrol leaders” can and do conduct interviews regularly, which are accessible online from various news stations and websites.”
The White House, Nuñez- Neto, and Clavel did not respond to requests for comment.
