Nearly 10 months after corporate media and Democrat conspiracy theorists flooded front pages, the White House press briefing room, and Twitter with assertions that Border Patrol agents whipped migrants, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigation found no evidence that the horseback unit used their reins to strike at the influx of Haitians illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. And in fact, it was the media’s fake story that sparked an investigation in the first place.
Viral photos and videos in September of 2021 appeared to show Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas, corralling several migrants who were trying to cross the water to get to the United States. These images and clips were accompanied by grandiose accusations that the border law enforcement agents were using “whips” against the fearful migrants.
Some media grifters such as MSNBC’s Joy Reid parroted those speculations as fact and suggested that “whips which come from the slave era, slavery era, were part of the package that we issue to any sort of law enforcement or government sanction personnel.” Other outlets, such as The New York Times, said the agents used “the reins of their horses to strike at running migrants.” The legacy paper tried to scrub that blatant lie from an article later when the photographer who took the viral photos said he never saw Border Patrol use their leather reins to whip anyone.
But even that didn’t stop President Joe Biden and his team from spreading the whipping lie as truth. Nor did it stop the corrupt media from amplifying the White House’s frenzy over the faux incident.
It was these reports, CBP admitted in its 511-page findings, that inspired its Office of Professional Responsibility to launch an investigation into the horse patrol unit.
“On September 20, 2021, the Office of Professional Responsibility initiated this investigation after reviewing media reports depicting potential misconduct that took place the previous day,” the report stated.
After assessing video and photo evidence and interviewing more than 30 eyewitnesses along with the agents in question for nearly a year, CBP investigators finally came to a conclusion contrary to what the media forced on Americans for weeks. The agency found only that the unit in question lacked command, control, and communication. As a result, at least four agents have been disciplined for intimidation, inappropriate language, and “administrative violations.”
CBP admitted that even though at least one agent acted unsafely and yelled denigrating remarks at the attempted illegal border-crossers, “there is no evidence that any migrants were forced to return to Mexico or denied entry to the United States” based on the actions of any border agents. Furthermore, “The investigation found no evidence that agents struck any person with horse reins.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
The idea that border agents were attacking migrants with their reins was a suspect narrative from the beginning. Several people with knowledge about law enforcement tactics at the border and horses quickly questioned the assumption that border agents were using their gear to force migrants away from the U.S.
In this, as in most cases, the corporate media are more guilty than the people they were excoriating in their pages and on their airwaves. Not only did they lie about the horse patrol unit’s actions, but they gave attention to it only because it distracted from Democrats’ border fiasco while fueling their broader anti-law-enforcement narratives.
More than 1.5 million illegal border-crossers have been apprehended since the beginning of this fiscal year. Migrants and law enforcement agents alike have died thanks to Biden’s humanitarian crisis at the border. Yet the only significant coverage the disaster down south has received came from a fake narrative that shifted the blame from Biden to the overworked agencies at the border.
The guilty party in the Haitian migrant whipping story isn’t Border Patrol. It’s the corporate media that lied about them to distract from the real story.
