https://www.vox.com/2019/1/3/18167401/shutdown-border-wall-trump-patrol-agents How the Border Patrol union became Trump’s closest shutdown allies Union officials: it’s okay if our agents don’t get paid on time, as long as we get the wall.
By Dara Lind[email protected] Jan 3, 2019, 7:10pm ESTSHARE Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s hastily called “press conference” on Thursday afternoon — in which neither he nor press secretary Sarah Sanders took questions — was less a press conference, in the traditional sense, than a way for Trump to signal-boost a politically helpful message.
And that message, delivered by Brandon Judd, Art Del Cueto, and Hector Garza of the National Border Patrol Council (the union representing Border Patrol agents) was this: Border Patrol agents are willing to keep the government shut down for as long as it takes to get the money Trump wants for his border wall — even if that means they have to continue working without pay.
Generally, a public sector union would hardly be expected to make a public appearance urging Congress not to pass a bill that would start paying their salaries again. But Judd and the other leaders of the National Border Patrol Council aren’t your typical public sector union — and have now become, by all appearances, closer allies to Trump than some of his appointed officials.
The Border Patrol union sees hawkish immigration policy as the key to employee morale
Generally, unions are expected to advocate for one of two agendas: the immediate, bread-and-butter needs of their membership (pay, benefits, time off, discipline) or the health of unions themselves (for card check, against right-to-work laws, etc.). Indeed, the current wave of anti-union pushback in conservative courts (including the 2018 Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME) is grounded in the sense that unions are doing too much of the latter and not enough of the former.
They are not, generally, expected to advocate for or against particular policies that are their members’ jobs to implement.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
