EL PASO — The U.S. Border Patrol local union in El Paso on Tuesday evening voted 14-13 to back the National Border Patrol Council's endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
A group of border agents from El Paso and New Mexico were trying to get Local 1929 to stay neutral in the presidential campaign and reject the national union's endorsement of the controversial Republican presidential candidate.
Stu Harris, vice president of local 1929 National Border Patrol Council, talks briefly with media after a narrow vote to continue supporting presidential candidate Donald Trump Tuesday night. Rudy Gutierrez / El Paso Times
"The endorsement from the national was basically an endorsement for border security. That’s all it was," Stu Harris, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1929 in El Paso, told the reporters after the union meeting Tuesday.
Harris declined to speak further about the vote at the union meeting which was closed to the public and the news media. Agents leaving the meeting said they could not speak to the media because they would get in trouble.
A group of more than 20 elected officials, community leaders and educators in El Paso and southern New Mexico had issued letters in the support of the agents seeking to reject the Trump endorsement.
The endorsement of Trump, who has made inflammatory comments about Mexicans, women and Muslims, damages the trust that the Border Patrol has worked years to build in El Paso and other border communities, the regional leaders said.
El Paso leaders who backed the agents said they were disappointed that the move to reject the Trump endorsement failed but that they were proud of the dissenting agents showed the courage to stand up at the union.
"You can’t support someone like Donald Trump and distance yourself from what he says about minorities and women and you can't distance yourself from the violence he tried to incite," El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar, one of the officials who signed the letter, said. "It's ridiculous to make the claim that only one aspect of Trump is being supported. You endorse Trump and you endorse all of him."
About 30 years ago, there was a "very adversarial relationship between the community and the Border Patrol that was damaging to El Paso," Escobar said. "There has been a positive evolution and I think the local union could have reinforced that today between them and the community they police."
The local represents about 1,700 agents — about 10% of the union's total membership — in the Border Patrol's El Paso sector, which covers far West Texas and all of New Mexico.
The March 30 endorsement by the National Border Patrol Council described Trump as "bold and outspoken" who "doesn't embrace political correctness" and that "there is no greater physical or economic threat to Americans today than our open border."
U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso, who supported the dissenting agents, said that the National Border Patrol Council's endorsement ignores the deep historic, cultural and economic ties between the U.S. and Mexico.
"I'm disappointed, but I'm very encouraged there were courageous agents that stood up to this endorsement and almost prevailed in rejecting something that is so harmful to this country, so harmful to El Paso and so harmful to the image of the Border Patrol," he said.
O'Rourke said that he had not spoken directly to the leadership of Local 1929 or the national union regarding the Trump endorsement.
Susie Byrd, a member of the El Paso Independent School District board and a former member of the El Paso City Council, helped organized support for the Border Patrol agents concerned about the Trump endorsement.
"I think it was so important what the dissenters did for our community," Byrd said. "They stood up for the values this community represents."
Follow Daniel Borunda on Twitter: @BorundaDaniel
