Why Some Immigration Agents Leave Their Jobs in Protest
A former Border Patrol agent recounts a 2018 hospital encounter that sparked his resignation and highlights growing dissent among immigration officers.
In the winter of 2018, Joshua Childress was assigned to guard a man who had fallen from a thirty‑foot border wall at Yuma Regional Medical Center in southwest Arizona. Childress, then in his seventh year with the United States Border Patrol, was accustomed to “hospital watch,” a duty that involves monitoring recently apprehended migrants while they receive medical care.
The injured man, who spoke fluent English, told Childress that he considered the United States his home. He explained that he had lived in Arizona since he was eight years old, longer than Childress had lived in the state. A few months earlier, a noise complaint after a barbecue led police to request his identification, which resulted in his deportation to Mexico.
When Childress asked why the man had not applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the man said his father feared the paperwork was a trap. He added that he barely spoke Spanish, knew no one in Mexico, and had spent three months wandering there before deciding to return to the United States, only to fall from the fence and break his leg.
The attending doctor diagnosed a complete fracture and recommended surgery in Mexico, warning that untreated injury could cause sepsis. For the time being, the man received a temporary cast and was returned to Border Patrol custody.
Growing Doubt Among Agents
Childress had encountered many migrants over his career and often focused on those with serious criminal histories. However, he began to question whether most migrants—who came to change tires, pick lettuce, or work in construction—were truly a threat. One encounter at the Yuma processing center involved a man who showed marks on his back from being whipped by smugglers after refusing to transport drugs; Childress later described the lashes as “Christlike.”
When Childress later escorted the injured man back to the Border Patrol station, he felt he was sending a “model immigrant” toward potential doom, yet he completed the hand‑off as he had done countless times before.
Resignation and Wider Dissent
Childress wrote an essay titled “Why I Quit the Border Patrol,” published in the fall of 2018. He said he realized he was placing people in cages for non‑violent offenses, a practice he opposed elsewhere in the law, and that he was enforcing rules that benefited only those born on the “right side of a line.”
His departure came shortly after the implementation of the Trump administration’s “zero‑tolerance policy,” which sparked national outrage over family separations. In the summer that followed, more than a dozen Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents signed a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen calling for the agency to be disbanded.
In July 2019, former Border Patrol agent Jenn Budd published an open letter urging current agents to demand change or quit in protest of what she called immoral orders. The following year, Border Patrol union leader Wesley Farris spoke to PBS’s “Frontline,” describing child separations as “the most horrible thing I’ve ever done.” Farris did not quit; instead, he asked to be reassigned.
Morale Under Successive Administrations
During President Joe Biden’s term, migrant encounters at the border rose dramatically. While some attributed this to “lax enforcement,” the administration retained several Trump‑era restrictions, leading to a twelvefold increase in detentions and a threefold rise in removals. Agents reported feeling “shackled” by the new policies.
By 2024, the Border Patrol had lost a quarter of its workforce, with many longtime agents opting for early retirement. One agent quoted by the Washington Examiner said, Under Biden, things are the worst they have ever been by far. Agents are afraid of ending up on the news for doing their job or getting in trouble for doing their job. There is no morale.
After Donald Trump returned to the White House, agents expressed optimism that the administration was again on their side. However, the goal of deporting one million people a year, as stated by senior adviser Stephen Miller, created new strain. A 2025 report in The Atlantic noted that ICE’s workforce “has never been so miserable,” with employees feeling burned out and morally conflicted as their focus shifted from drug smugglers to asylum seekers and day‑laborers.
In early 2026, following the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, journalist Ken Klippenstein reported that many immigration agents were “getting seriously paranoid” about public backlash. By July, morale had dipped below its low point during the Biden administration, with agents complaining of being overextended, inundated with novice recruits, and undermined by inflammatory rhetoric from senior officials. They expressed frustration that political posturing distracted from their core mission of protecting the public and stopping the “very worst of the worst.”
These accounts illustrate a pattern of increasing moral conflict and declining morale among immigration officers, prompting some to quit, others to seek reassignment, and many to voice criticism of policies they deem harmful.
