The Border Patrol has been quickly growing its ranks of chaplains to help with mounting distress.
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Border Patrol Chaplain pins are ready to be pinned during a Border Patrol Chaplain Academy graduation ceremony, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Dania Beach, Fla. Border Patrol specialist Mitchell Holmes listens to instructor and chaplain Myrna Gonzalez during a training session, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Dania Beach, Fla.
Border Patrol instructor and Chaplain Christopher Day directs a session at the Border Patrol Chaplain Academy, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Dania Beach, Fla. They discovered he’d been drowning in alcohol his angst at being deployed away from his family for the holidays at one of the border’s hotspots. The training scenario was achingly real for the South Florida-based agent role-playing the distressed one — he had struggled when relocated for 18 months to Del Rio, Texas, away from his two children — and also for Fredrick, who overcame alcoholism before becoming a chaplain.
“I’m not there to convert or proselytize,” said academy instructor Jason Wilhite, an agent in Casa Grande, Arizona, and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A chaplain since 2015, he was previously involved in the agency's nonreligious, mental health-focused peer support program after a fellow agent died in a car accident.
Day praised the trainees' efforts to get the agent to talk, but advised them not to say, “'I understand.' Because you don’t.” Border Patrol assistant chief and chaplaincy program manager Spencer Hatch highlighted the need to maintain both the “hypervigilance” of law enforcement and the humanitarian instinct to empathize with migrants and fellow agents.
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