U.S. Border Patrol agents confront a demonstrator during a protest against immigration enforcement in Minneapolis on Jan. 8, 2026. (Tim Evans/Reuters)
"We've got plenty of agents that are willing to go out there to go and help because they see the challenges that our ICE officers and our other our law enforcement partners are going up against and they want to be there to help," he explained. "They're very well-trained, they're very eager, they are patriotic, and they want to do their duty to secure the border and help secure America."
Perez said that because the Biden administration wanted the flow of migrants entering the country to be processed quickly, "there are very few records for us to rely on that are accurate."
"There's just so many people that were let in, to the tune of millions of people, and they were interspersed throughout the United States," he said, adding, "A lot of these people weren't required to put information that we could vet because the administration wanted them out quick."
Perez said that though Border Patrol agents have found themselves being deployed to communities far from home, they have approached operations with the same ethic. At the same time, he said the vitriol from some has had some impact on officers in his union.
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Border Patrol agents in Minnesota. (Brendan Gutenschwager via Storyful)
"From the human aspect, we know the type of people that we've come across, and we don't want them in the cities and communities of America because we know that the damage they can cause," he explained. "We've got so many murderers, rapists, burglars, robbers, and we want to get them out of our country."
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"Our Border Patrol agents live in the communities that they serve, the communities that they patrol and protect. And so, when we go out into other municipalities across the country, we take that into account because that is somebody else's home, that's somebody's city that they live in, and we want them to be safe."
Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-patrol-union-chief-touts-high-morale-despite-clashes-agitators-patriotic