Texas Border Patrol Twitter Account Liked Homophobic Post and Retweeted Stephen Miller

The Twitter account for a Texas U.S. Customs and Border Patrol office liked a homophobic tweet about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and retweeted several others from immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller criticizing the Biden administration.

Among the posts from Miller retweeted by the West Texas regional office were conservative claims that the Biden administration is persecuting top Republicans for “dissent” and that President Joe Biden “ended nearly 250 years of constitutional government.” The account also liked a post from another account referring to Buttigieg as “Pete Buttplug.” Buttigieg is the first openly gay Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. 

The El Paso-based office retweeted the Miller posts Saturday, according to the local website El Paso Matters, but the retweets and likes of conservative opinion went back to July. 

CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus denounced the posts as “totally unacceptable” in a tweet and said “this must not happen again.” The agency also said it would deactivate the account in a statement Saturday. 

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection has become aware of unauthorized and inappropriate content that was posted to the @CBPWestTexas Twitter account,” the statement read. “CBP will take action to deactivate the account and has referred the matter to the Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate. The tweets do not reflect the values of this administration and our work to rebuild a humane, orderly, and secure immigration system.”

As of Monday, the account was still active, though the retweets were gone.  

Miller was one of Trump’s top advisers during his time in the White House and was the architect of the administration’s family separation policy. After Trump lost the election in 2020, Miller helped rush through a series of changes seeking to curtail immigration before Trump left office, according to Politico. And emails between Miller and Breitbart staffers published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2019 showed Miller pushing an anti-immigration agenda to what was then the top media outlet on the far-right. 

Rep. Veronica Escobar, the House Democrat who represents El Paso in Congress, said Sunday that the person who managed the account “has absolutely no business being in public service. Especially if allowed to carry a gun and a badge.”

The National Border Patrol Council, the labor union representing 18,000 Border Patrol officers, has endorsed mostly Republican candidates for Congress in this election cycle, including Arizona GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters last week. 

The union has also repeatedly criticized Biden; on Sunday, for example, it tweeted that Biden had “turned the border into a lawless death zone run by cartels.” 

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