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Why Some U.S. Border Agents Are Contemplating Suicide
Former Customs and Border Protection Chief Patrol agent Chris Clem near the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024. On the left is wall constructed under the Biden administration and on the right is wall constructed under the Trump administration (Caitlin O'Hara for The Free Press)
‘We see things people should never see, like rotting human remains, abuse of every kind. Do you know what that does to you over time?’
By Michele DeMarco and Joe Nocera
05.20.24
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Brian, a U.S. Border Patrol agent who works along the south Texas border, is haunted by something that happened a few years ago. A man—a Mexican cartel member, he believes—emerged from the banks of the Rio Grande carrying two toddlers. The children, a boy and a girl, were wearing nothing but diapers. The man darted across the border, dropped the childre…

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Joe Nocera
Joe Nocera is an editor and writer at The Free Press. During his long career in journalism, he has been a columnist at The New York Times, Bloomberg, Esquire, and GQ, the editorial director of Fortune, and a writer at Newsweek, Texas Monthly and The Washington Monthly. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007.
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