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Report: Border Patrol Knew About Agents’ Closed Facebook Group Since 2016

The agency’s public affairs office has reportedly been monitoring the group for the past year “as a source of intelligence.”

Customs and Border Patrol officials have reportedly been aware of a secret Facebook group where former and current Border Patrol agents posted offensive content for years, long before a ProPublica story alerted the public to it earlier this week, Politico reports. A Homeland Security official told Politico that leadership was alerted to certain posts in the group as early as 2016. A former official told the news outlet that CBP public affairs officials have been monitoring the group, called “I'm 10-15,” over the past year “as a source of intelligence” to see “what people are talking about.” “We were not talking about ‘10-15’ as a liability or an asset or as an item of concern,” the former official said. One post of an agent simulating a sex act with a “training mannequin” was flagged to current acting chief of CBP Mark Morgan in 2016, when he was the Border Patrol Chief, according to the report. Another post of an agent defecating in the Arizona desert was flagged to then-acting deputy Tucson Deputy Sector Chief Felix Chavez. At the time, none of the group’s members were subjected to any punishment.