Border Patrol has a history of excessive force. Critics say they're unprepared in Minneapolis
Border Patrol has a history of excessive force. Critics say they're unprepared in Minneapolis
- January 26, 2026
- Irene Vega, sociology, offers expertise on this segment of NPR – All Things Considered
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The skills that these federal immigration agents are bringing to these cities are a complete mismatch for what we actually need. Irene Vega is a sociologist at UC Irvine who studied border officers’ attitudes about use of force, interviewing more than 90 of them. She says CBP has a very specific institutional culture. “They tell themselves they are very different. They would tell me that they were trained to hike in the desert. You know they often told me about arresting 10-15 people who were very compliant.”
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