By Steve Neavling
U.S. Border Patrol agents from various positions and locations frequently used the derogatory term “tonk” when referring to unauthorized migrants, according to emails and text messages obtained by Huffington Post.
The use of the slur occurred despite leaders in the agency threatening disciplinary action against agents who use discriminatory and racist language.
The documents show that the use of the slur is commonplace, even when the communications included the email signatures of supervising agents.
CBP declined to reveal whether any agents have been disciplined for using the slur.
While the origin of the term is unclear, the most common belief is that it comes from the noise produced when striking a heavy-duty flashlight or baton against a migrant’s head.
Sure enough, in an email in January 2019, a recipient responded to a supervising agent in New Mexico that he bought a shirt for a colleague “that looks like the following… It will give you a good laugh I hope.” The T-shirt features a heavy-duty flashlight next to the slur.
Another email sent by the watch commander for the agency’s Wellton Station in the Yuma Sector in Arizona contained the subject line, “American TONK,” along with the comment, “The future…” with a link to a news story about a brown-skinned woman breastfeeding her child at Disneyland.
In a text chain, Border Patrol employees made fun of a coworker for “marrying a tonk” because “he cant find a legal chick here WOW.”
Huffington Post revealed numerous other instances in which the slur was used.
