Border Patrol is training more chaplains as the job and the polarizing debate over immigration worry agents

DENMARK BEACH, Florida — As immigration remains hotly disputed priority for the Trump administration after playing a decisive role in deeply polarized electionsBorder Patrol agents tasked with enforcing many of its regulations face increasing challenges on and off the job.

More people are training to become chaplains to help their peers deal with security threats, including powerful controlling cartels a significant part of the border dynamics and we are seeing an increase suffering among migrants — all while politics in Washington continues to change and public outrage is directed against them on all sides.

“The hardest thing is that people … don’t know what we do, and because of that, we get called terrible names,” said Brandon Fredrick, an agent in Buffalo, New York, whose some family members resorted to name-calling.

Earlier this month, he served as an instructor at a training academy for Border Patrol chaplains, whose number has nearly doubled in the past four years. The goal of this action is to help agents motivated by the desire to ensure U.S. border security cope with increasing suffering before it leads to family dysfunction, addiction or even suicide.

During a recent academy, held at a Border Patrol facility near Miami, Fredrick evaluated pairs of chaplains-in-training who played the role of checking in on another agent who didn’t show up for work.

They discovered that he was drowning in alcohol due to his anxiety about being sent on holiday away from his family to one of the most important points on the border. The training scenario was painfully real for the South Florida agent playing the role of a troubled man – something he struggled with for 18 months after moving to Del Rio, Texas, away from his two children – and for Fredrick, who overcame alcoholism before becoming a chaplain.

Fredrick said interacting with chaplains can reduce agents’ reluctance to express their emotions.

“My mission every day is to ensure that no young Agent Fredrick suffers alone,” he added. Fredrick, a Catholic, has been an agent for over 15 years and has dealt with such tragic cases as a smuggling attempt that resulted in an Indian family froze to death on the Canada-US border.

Unlike the police or military who enlist religious leaders to help with everything suicide prevention Down dealing with anxiety After The murder of George FloydThe Border Guard trains mainly secular agents with the support of their religion to be chaplains.

After graduation, they join about 240 other chaplains and resume their normal work, but are constantly on call to provide largely confidential care for the well-being of their 20,000 colleagues.

Although most chaplains are Christians, Muslim and Jewish agents have also recently been trained. Chaplains do not conduct services related to a specific faith, and they only discuss the topic of religion if the person they are helping does so first.

“I’m not there to proselytize or proselytize,” said college instructor Jason Wilhite, an agent in Casa Grande, Arizona, and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has been a chaplain since 2015. He was previously involved with the agency’s non-religious peer support program focusing on mental health after another agent died in a car accident.

Agent Jesus Vasavilbaso decided to join the Border Patrol’s peer support program after witnessing the trauma of repeatedly responding to calls from lost and dying migrants in the unforgiving desert southwest of Tucson, Arizona.

“Sometimes you come home and think you didn’t find them,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important that we check in with each other all the time.”

During the recent chaplain academy, which lasted 2.5 weeks, 15 chaplains-in-training – mostly from the Border Patrol, as well as several officers from the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management – ​​practiced real-life scenarios, including responding to a fatal accident involving agents and notifying your spouse that your loved one has died on the job.

Chris Day, a chaplain since 2017, assessed interns who tried to comfort an agent who shouted that it was all his fault that his partner was killed. In a training scenario, their car crashed while they were chasing someone crossing the border illegally.

Day praised the interns’ efforts to get the agent to talk, but advised them not to say, “I understand.” Because you don’t.

Later, Day told the class that he had helped an agent who saw the smugglers he was chasing crash their car into a family, seriously injuring a small child. He said the agent was “ugly crying” at the scene and kept saying his child was the same age, so Day took him aside for a moment and moved on.

“We hugged,” said Day, a Baptist with a Psalm verse tattooed on his right arm.