The Other Border Crisis
We all have a responsibility to acknowledge the suicide crisis in immigration law enforcement and do our part to ACT
In early 2016, I got a phone call from a co-worker. He informed me that another ICE agent that we had worked with had taken his own life. Eight of our colleagues served as pallbearers. It was the first of several such calls I received in my career.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. And LEOs have long been identified as a higher risk for developing PTSD, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, that can lead to suicide. Nowhere has this been a bigger crisis in recent years than in the ranks of our immigration law enforcement agencies.?
In 2022, there were fourteen suicides among the Border Patrol’s approximately 20,000 agents - part of the 149 reported suicides across the agency since 2007.?A rate that far exceeds the percentage of suicides among other law enforcement agencies.
Three and a half years of the worst border crisis in American history has broken down many of the men and women who pledged to enforce federal immigration law. While the number of border patrol agents has remained relatively stable, encounters along the border have ballooned since 2021 with over 2.5 million encounters in 2023 alone.
A 2023 DHS OIG report on CBP and ICE employees’ health and morale found that the crisis is having an impact. According to the report, overwork is a prime culprit with 24 percent expressing concerns over a lack of work-life balance, and some 13 percent reporting experiencing mental health issues. Elsewhere, studies have shown that immigration law enforcement officers suffer from additional stressors than other police, to include the moral dilemma caused by releasing so many individuals into the United States.
The reports are not shocking. Since 2021, rather than working the line to stop dangerous people and things from entering the country, increasing numbers of agents have been assigned to process and release millions of illegal immigrants. This has led to a crisis of purpose and lowered morale among individuals who were trained to stop illegal entry.
And as many agents are stuck processing and issuing NTAs, they have watched more than 2 million known “gotaways” evade capture, knowing that many of those are prior deports, aggravated felons, dangerous criminals and special interest aliens intent on harming Americans. Meanwhile those still on the line have been traumatized by the inhumanity they witness daily, while also being publicly vilified by their superiors for enforcing the law and upholding their oaths.
How would you feel if your priority mission was “preventing terrorists and terrorists weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States,” and you were helpless as your own chain of command actively undermined that mission year after year? A moral dilemma, indeed.
It should surprise no one that the cumulative stress of the crisis at our southern border has added to the mental health crisis in law enforcement. What is surprising, however, is the relative lack of action being taken to address the crisis in the ranks.
In 2021, CBP hired a “suicidologist,” Dr. Ken Corso, to address the issue. Corso, who hosts a suicide prevention podcast for the agency (the last episode was posted in February 2023), has told press that he does not believe the crisis at the Southern border is to blame for the increased numbers of suicides in the Border Patrol, instead citing off-duty issues related to family and relationships. As of 2023, CBP indicated that they intended to hire 40 clinicians and 13 psychiatrists to address the needs of their over 60,000 employees, but it is unclear how many have been onboarded.
Elsewhere, in late 2022, on the heels of three Border Patrol suicides, Reps. Tony Gonzales and Henry Cuellar introduced a bipartisan act, Taking Action to Prevent Suicides (TAPS), to create a multiagency task force to investigate the underlying factors contributing to high suicide rates in CBP. It would also have protected agents who sought mental health services from poor job performance reviews. It has never made it out of committee.
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This is unacceptable, and the lack of serious executive and legislative action to address this crisis is frustrating, but while we wait for the beltway to do something, we are not personally helpless. Each of us can help prevent suicide by following these three steps to ACT:
1) Ask - If something seems off, be direct in asking your colleagues if they are considering suicide.
2) Care - Listen compassionately to what they tell you
3) Take Action - Seek professional help from 911 or the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
We can also be more proactive to protect our own mental health. I addressed some of the ways LEOs can fight back against burnout in last week's newsletter, but to summarize:
We can’t do anything about the mess that politicians have made of our border. But we all have a responsibility to do our part to mitigate the other crisis within the DHS ranks.
If you don't know what to do, there are resources to help you learn how to help a colleague who is struggling. I wish I had known more about the signs of suicidal behavior and the risks to my fellow agents earlier in my career. I wish I had been more prepared to help others. Take the time to learn the signs. And don't be afraid to ACT. You might save a life. And as our friends at the Overwatch Collective say, “One more is one less.”
Out of Role!
Kristofor Healey is a former award-winning Special Agent who spent more than 15 years investigating large scale tele-fraud, employee misconduct and public corruption cases for the Department of Homeland Security. He shares daily stoic quotes, relatable stories, and journal prompts in his new book, In Valor: 365 Stoic Meditations for First Responders and on his FREE Substack channel, The Stoic Responder. He provides stoic leadership training to law enforcement agencies and can be booked ?for speaking engagements through the Team Never Quit Speakers Bureau. He can be reached at his website, www.kristoforhealey.com.