Carla Provost was the Chief of the United States Border Patrol from August 2018 to January 2020. For 14 months prior to her appointment, Provost served as acting Chief for Border Patrol. Provost had worked for the Border Patrol since 1995. In her role, Provost assisted in implementing the family separation policy and was aware of systematic problems in an early test run of the policy.
Headline: NBC News: “Border Patrol chief Carla Provost, first woman to lead agency, to step down.” [NBC News, 1/14/20]
DHS IG Report Found Provost Received Report From El Paso Office On Problems In Test Launch Of Family Separation And Later “Assisted In Implementing Zero Tolerance And Was Aware Of The Need For Improved Coordination Among CBP, ICE And HHS.” “The El Paso Sector office compiled a report on technical issues with family separations after the November 2017 test, which was submitted directly to then-acting Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost. “The following year, the same acting chief assisted in implementing Zero Tolerance and was aware of the need for improved coordination among CBP, ICE and HHS [Office of Refugee Resettlement] to address the known challenges encountered in separating migrant families,” the report states. CBP declined to remediate these known issues ahead of the Zero Tolerance policy rollout. Instead, on the day then-Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen signed the policy memo, Border Patrol leadership told agents to use spreadsheets until the agency could make upgrades to the e3 system.” [NextGov, 12/2/19]
August 2018: Provost Claimed “There Was Never A Family Separation Initiative.” “Provost said on Thursday that there was never a family separations “initiative,” but rather a prosecution initiative under the zero tolerance policy. “Let me be clear, there was never a family separation initiative, there was a prosecution initiative under zero tolerance,” she said. “Under that initiative, when we first kicked that off, the intent was to prosecute all amenable adults, so there was no group that was excluded from that.”” [The Hill, 8/10/18]
Provost Was Member Of Secret Facebook Group For Current And Former Border Patrol Agents That Featured Racist Posts About Immigrants. “Last summer, Provost condemned racist posts about migrants that were made public after having been posted on a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents, calling them “completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see — and expect — from our agents day in and day out.” Provost said in congressional testimony in July that she joined the group in 2017 and that she had been one of the group’s thousands of members, saying she “didn’t think anything of it at the time” because she rarely used Facebook. She said that when she learned of the racist posts, she immediately self-reported her membership to internal investigators and “turned my entire Facebook account over.”” [NBC News, 1/14/20]
