Border Patrol Agents ‘Much Happier Under Trump,’ Says Council President

Border Patrol agent morale is much improved under President Donald Trump, according to the head of the National Border Patrol Council. The change is causing more agents to remain with the Border Patrol as job satisfaction increases.

Border Patrol Agent Brandon Judd appeared on Fox News @Night in his capacity as president of the National Border Patrol Council. He joined U.S. Representative Martha McSally (R-AZ) on Tuesday night’s episode.

“We had a difficult time retaining our employees because if you look at the past eight years, the good guys were being handcuffed — our agents were being handcuffed,” Judd told Shannon Bream. “We were taking the handcuffs off the bad guys and we were just letting them go.”

“Since we’ve had a new president come in, and because he is tough on the laws and wants to enforce the laws the way they’re written on the books” Agent Judd explained, “our agents are a heck of a lot happier.”

He said this led to increased agent retention in 2017. Judd explained that new funding for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) needs to go to hiring both more Border Patrol agents and CBP officers. “We both do an extremely important job so you have to have a mixture of both.”

Representative McSally praised President Trump’s leadership on the issue of border security. After attending the White House meeting on Tuesday afternoon, McSally told Bream, “There’s some clear priorities here. Securing our border, stopping illegal immigration, not incentivizing more [illegal immigration] in the future, addressing and getting rid of chain migration, and the visa lottery.”

The Arizona Republican said she and other representatives will be introducing a bill that will address the issues President Trump discussed. She said she appreciated that there appeared to be some small level of support from the Democrats in the meeting on some of these issues.

“This cannot just be about addressing DACA, or a clean ‘DREAM Act,'” she explained. “That’s a non-starter.”

“We’ve got to address the root causes of why we have 800,000 people here illegally in the first place,” McSally stated. She said we have to “make sure we don’t have that happen again in the future.”

McSally expressed her support for the border wall and other physical infrastructure to secure the border.

“We’ve seen in my district that I represent, where we previously had no barriers and no fencing — it was a free-for-all,” the former Air Force combat pilot explained. “The cartels were just driving through anywhere. The ranchers and border residents were having to deal with it.” She said the current infrastructure has caused “problems for the cartels to have to deal with.”

“We absolutely need a border wall and everything that goes with it,” McSally stated.

Judd is in Washington, D.C. this week to speak to congressional leaders about issues faced by Border Patrol agents in the current environment and the tools they need to do their jobs.