One of the Border Patrol agents falsely accused of whipping Haitian migrants in Texas nearly three years ago has received a Border Patrol achievement award from the agency for his work on human smuggling cases, the New York Post reports.
The agent was one of five vilified by Democrats and the Biden administration after images on Twitter circulated showing the agents trying to block migrants from entering the U.S., and in one case grabbing a migrant's shirt.
Some media outlets misidentified the agents' split reins as whips. Reins are used to control and direct the horse.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas initially backed the agents but later backtracked, saying the images "troubled me profoundly."
"Our nation saw horrifying images that do not reflect who we are. We know that those images painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation's ongoing battle against systemic racism," Mayorkas said at a press conference at the time.
Days later, he walked back the statement criticizing the agents' actions.
"I made the statements without having seen the images," he said from the White House press briefing room on Sept. 24, 2021.
"The horses have long reins, and the image in the photograph that we all saw, and that horrified the nation, raised serious questions about what ... occurred. And as I stated quite clearly, it conjured up images of what has occurred in the past," Mayorkas added, referring to slavery in the U.S.
Mayorkas has yet to apologize to the agents, Fox News reported last August.
Customs and Border Patrol in July 2022 released findings of an investigation into the incident, stating that they found "no evidence that agents struck any person with horse reins."
A DHS source told the Post it was "hilarious and ridiculous that almost three years later, a Border Patrol agent who was accused of being racist and so vilified by this Biden administration now wins an achievement award for his efforts in preventing smuggling, before he gets a public apology."