New York Times Smears Border Officials With Deceptive Tweet

The left-leaning New York Times smeared federal law enforcement officials tasked with protecting the U.S. border and points of entry with a deceptive tweet that distorted the number of officials who had been arrested in a two-year period for corruption charges.

“More than 500 employees of the United States’ primary border security agency were charged with drug trafficking, accepting bribes and a range of other crimes over a two-year period,” the Times tweeted on Friday and again on Saturday.

The Times’ deceptive tweet, initially flagged by Breitbart’s Border and Cartel team, was also the opening paragraph of the newspaper’s report on the number of arrests of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Border Patrol officials during FY 2016 and FY 2017.

The first problem with the Times’ reporting is that the statement that “more than 500 employees” were arrested during the two-year period is false — the real number is 496, as some employees were arrested more than once, which the CBP specifically noted.

The second and much larger problem with the Times’ reporting is their insinuation that those employees were arrested for “drug trafficking and accepting bribes.”

The Times’ specifically noted those two offenses because they want to cast the CBP as a corrupt organization but the truth is that there were only 30 arrests during FY 2016 and FY 2017 for corruption charges — not “more than 500 employees” — out of approximately 60,000 employees.

CBP employees were arrested for the following crimes during FY 2016 and FY 2017:

• Drug/Alcohol-Related Misconduct: 228
• Domestic/Family Misconduct: 95
• Corruption: 30
• Impeding the Criminal Justice System: 27
• Assault: 25
• Property Crimes: 18
• Traffic/Driving Misconduct: 18
• Crimes Involving Children: 12
• White Collar Crime: 11
• Minor Offenses: 10
• Threatening Behavior: 10
• Weapons Violations: 9
• Miscellaneous Misconduct: 7
• Sexual Misconduct: 4
• Violent Crimes: 4
• Mission-Related Misconduct: 2

“Integrity is a core value that guides all CBP employees and is reflected in the successful work the Agency performs each day securing our nation’s borders and protecting its citizens from harm,” the CBP report stated. “The public has placed its trust in CBP and with that trust comes an expectation that its employees will perform their duties with a level of integrity that includes transparency, accountability, and professionalism.”

“All CBP employees are guided by these principles of the public trust both on and off-duty,” the report added. “Those who breach it are held accountable for their actions.”