Knocking on your door

When the U.S. Border Patrol began building its force on the shores of Lake Erie, a reporter asked: Why are you here? What is your mission? There was no legitimate answer provided. There is no mission, or it's a mission that must be kept secret from the public. In the months and years that followed, the BP, which has a multimillion-dollar headquarters in Port Clinton, has made hundreds of arrests and conducted hundreds of investigations. But there's been nary a word about who's been arrested and what crime they are being charged with committing. The Border Patrol won't say if suspects are alive or dead, where they are being incarcerated or what is the next step in the federal criminal process. Our concern is the same as it has been for years: The federal government is operating a secret police agency with a history of racist behavior in the middle of our town, in the middle of our community, in the middle of America with a clear disdain and disregard of our American values. State officials — the governor's office, the attorney general, our congressional representatives, our senators and state lawmakers — all are unable or unwilling to stand up and demand the federal government operate its police force in a professional manner, with accountability to the people who live here, and with an observance of professional police standards. The Border Patrol, openly and routinely, and without penalty, ignores state administrative law without penalty. How extensive that lawlessness really is is an unknown that cannot be known. There is no mechanism that allows the Border Patrol to be held to any standard of any kind. Law is what keeps our government from wantonly abusing its power. It's what stands between freedom and oppression. In Ohio, it's called the "Public Records Act," a law that works fairly well and is carefully crafted to encourage transparency in government. We like to say — and repeat — that the "spirit and intent of ORC 149.43" is open government, accessibility to public records, with limited exceptions. In our experience, most public institutions have come to understand the law and they seek to comply with it when individuals, and reporters, make public records requests. On the federal level, it's called the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. To make a FOIA is to ask a federal government agency for public records. Good luck with that. In history, there might not be a law as polar opposite in name to consequence as this one. Years ago, the Register made a series of carefully crafted public records requests — we made FOIAs to the Border Patrol station — designed to test the agency's willingness to disclose. After years of follow-up, nothing effectively was ever provided by the agency. Dodge, loophole, dodge, loophole, dodge, dodge, dodge. There was no willingness then — and there is none now — to make any disclosure about the Border Patrol's mission here, its operations, its staff, its arrests, its costs or benefits. After years of frustration, we decided to try again to find out what the Border Patrol's mission is here in Ohio. We asked for arrest reports from 2019, and other specific records, in a carefully crafted FOIA. Months later, in the "go-to" response, lawyers wrote back saying our request is "too broad," signaling that any cooperation between the public agency and this constituent would be a legal battle with the considerable expense that goes with that. There's nothing "free" about the Freedom of Information Act. This is an agency that, in 2018, sent more than 200 heavily armed agents onto the property of a local business to arrest about 100 unarmed working men and women, with families, who work in the migrant farming industry. It was a shameful display of raw power and an example of what we allow when we look the other way. Some day those agents might be coming for you. State and federal officials who represent Ohioans are complicit with this secret police agency operating in our midst if they continue doing nothing to fix this situation.