Daniel Borunda
El Paso Times, Texas
EL PASO, Texas — A weekend protest sparked the ire of U.S. Border Patrol supporters after accusations that a memorial to fallen agents was defaced at the National Border Patrol Museum in El Paso.
About two dozen protesters — some with bandannas covering their faces — held banners, sang and chanted in a take-over-style demonstration Saturday afternoon inside the museum on Trans Mountain Road.
The museum is not a part of the Border Patrol. The museum, which has free admission, is run on donations and by volunteers.
Stickers of photos of the Guatemalan girl Jakelin Caal Maquin and other immigrant children who died in U.S. custody were stuck on exhibits, including a memorial plaque with the photos of fallen agents.
“We feel this act was a disgrace, and the protest is misplaced against the men and women of the Border Patrol,” said Carlos Favela, spokesman and executive vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1929, the agents’ union in El Paso.
Protesters crossed the line when they defaced exhibits and the memorial to fallen agents and should be prosecuted, Favela said.
Border Patrol concerns about overcrowding “got a deaf ear from Congress” until the children’s deaths, Favela said. “All this is being blamed on the agents, who are dealing with this to the best of their ability,” he said.
The demonstration by an activist group called “Tornillo: The Occupation” was part of a series of protests dubbed the “Weekend of Revolutionary Love.”
The group’s final scheduled demonstration took place Monday afternoon at San Jacinto Plaza in Downtown.
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The group had protested the now-closed Tornillo child immigrant tent detention center and called for “disruptive nonviolent direct action” to highlight “an unjust immigration system.”
At the museum, activists held banners stating “No estan olvidados” (You are not forgotten) and chanted “Say it loud, say it clear, Border Patrol kills” and “Up, up with liberation. Down, down with deportation.”
The protest was filmed by activists in a video posted on the group’s Facebook page.
“We are here at the Border Patrol Museum and what we did: We reclaimed their false narrative and put the truth,” a woman said in the video. “Let them know that Border Patrol kills. There shouldn’t be a museum for genocide.”
The protest group stated that military police arrived, blocked the museum parking lot and checked protesters’ identification before letting them go.
“Today, a group of protesters invaded the Border Patrol Museum and defaced all of our exhibits, including our sacred Memorial Room,” David Ham, whom Channel 7-KVIA identified as the museum board president, posted Saturday on Facebook.
“Efforts to prosecute them will be pursued once damage is assessed,” Ham posted. “This angers me greatly.”
It was unclear which law enforcement agency would handle any vandalism investigation at the museum.
The protest drew condemnation from Border Patrol supporters across the nation.
Houlton, Maine, Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens in a tweet said that protesters had “defaced our fallen agent memorial (a very sacred monument).”
The museum grounds are the site of an annual memorial service for fallen agents.
Protesters on social media countered that “there is nothing more sacred than lifting up the names of the children that were taken from us.”
The museum began in 1985 in the basement of the Cortez Building in Downtown El Paso. The museum opened in 1994 at its current mountainside location in the Northeast.
Museum officials could not be reached for comment Monday, when the museum is closed.
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©2019 the El Paso Times (El Paso, Texas)