An ex-head of the Border Patrol, Rodney Scott, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Biden-Harris administration did a lot to hide the immigration problem from the public. This came just days after another sector chief issued similar claims.
On September 18, Aaron Heitke, who used to be the chief patrol agent for the San Diego Sector of Border Patrol, spoke to a House committee. He said that the White House told agents to hide information about arrests of special interest aliens (SIAs), hide large groups of illegal immigrants from the press, and do other things to hide how bad the border crisis really was. The DCNF heard from Scott, who was in charge of the Border Patrol from the end of the Trump administration to the initial seven months of the Joe Biden administration. He said he was given similar orders.
In the minutes after the Biden government took office, there was a gag order on us, Scott told the DCNF.
“When the new chief of staff for Border Protection got there, one of her first orders was to tell us we couldn’t talk to the media, do news releases, or talk to the public without first getting permission from the White House,” Scott said. “They were not only not clear, but the talking points they did give us were not even correct.”
Scott was in charge of the Border Patrol at the same time that Vice President Kamala Harris was working to find out why people are coming to the U.S. illegally from Central America. The former chief told the DCNF that Harris never talked to him, even after she was named “border czar.”
Scott has been a Border Patrol agent since the early 1990s, and he has seen many government changes. The veteran cop said that it wasn’t new for higher-ups to make it harder for people to talk to the public, but the Biden-Harris administration’s level of control was unlike anything he had seen before.
According to Scott, there were no allowed news conferences and no walks of the border. “It was the first time ever. That’s the strictest gag order I’ve ever seen.”
Heitke’s statement to the DCNF came after Scott’s comments. Heitke, who used to be the top agent for the San Diego sector, said he couldn’t talk about the growing number of SIAs (migrants who could be a threat to national security) violating the border.
Heitke told the House Homeland Committee, “Before this government, the San Diego area had an average of 10–15 SIAs per year. Once word got out that crossing the line was a lot easier, San Diego had over 100 SIAs in 2022, more than 100 SIAs in 2023, and even more this year.”
