Fox anchor gives Border Patrol union rep platform to downplay hateful Facebook group: “It's around 20 individuals”

Art Del Cueto: “I can tell you that it is a minimum amount of individuals that have been commenting in that rude way”

ProPublica reported on July 1 that a private Facebook group where current and former Border Patrol “agents joke about migrant deaths and post sexist memes” had “roughly 9,500 members.”

From the July 2 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered Overtime:

Video file

ART DEL CUETO (BORDER PATROL UNION VP): Before the agency itself put out a statement -- the National Border Patrol Council put out a statement and we condemn these actions. Obviously, it's not something that we are going to cheerlead. It's obviously something that we are against. And I will tell you that there's a lot being said about the amount of individuals that are on that page, but I can tell you that it is a minimum amount of individuals that have been commenting in that rude way. Not that it makes a difference, right? But --

MELISSA FRANCIS (GUEST ANCHOR): What's a minimum, just so that I know what you're talking about? How many? What's a minimum? Is it like five, ten?

DEL CUETO: Yeah, well we've seen -- it's around 20 individuals that are the ones that would be constantly putting something up. And also I will add that on that page, not all of them are Border Patrol agents. It's hard to know who's an agent and who's not an agent. So, I mean, it's just -- and we condemn it, I think it's wrong.

FRANCIS: What do you think should happen to the agents who were on there, if anything? Yeah, let me --

DEL CUETO: Excuse me?

FRANCIS: What do you think should happen to the agents that are on there?

DEL CUETO: No, I definitely think that if agents are found doing something that's offensive, they should be dealt with. And they should be -- the agency should do some type of discipline on those individuals. I don't agree with it, I don't think it's right to do any of that. No one from the National Border Patrol Council is going to say it's the right thing to do. We are very much against it. And I will add that there's agents that have been disciplined before in the past from things that they have posted on this Facebook page.

Previously

Former Border Patrol chief tells Fox & Friends that Facebook group where officers joked about migrant deaths is just a “distraction”

Fox's Brian Kilmeade likens overcrowded border detention facilities to a house party with 100 people

Rush Limbaugh says that “maybe toilet water is a step up for” some migrants, “based on what the left is telling us”