HODGDON, Maine – The new Houlton sector border patrol chief no longer wakes up to a tragic list of daily incidents like he experienced at his prior post in Texas.
He doesn’t have to deal with four, five or six emergencies or 3,000 newly apprehended migrants needing food, transportation and a cell in an already overburdened holding facility.
“When you don’t wake up with that scenario, it’s a beautiful thing and you can focus on taking care of your workforce and taking care of the community,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chief Patrol Agent Juan Bernal said. “I can be proactive about making sure that Maine is and remains one of the safest states.”
Bernal applied for the Houlton sector job for the promotion and career advancement it offered, he said. Houlton is one of 20 border protection sectors around the country. The agents protect the northeastern corner of the nation’s international border with Canada encompassing the entire State of Maine.
He arrived in February and is overseeing 611 land border miles as well as the coast with 200 agents. In Del Rio, where he was acting chief patrol agent, Bernal was responsible for 242 miles of border with Mexico and 2,000 agents.
A typical Del Rio day for Bernal meant juggling the multiple challenges of thousands of migrants entering the country illegally with major border incidents, including deaths, agent assaults and crime.
“Those happen regularly down there and you have to immediately jump into action trying to fix the situation while at the same time trying to figure out where you are going to hold 3,000 people when your maximum capacity is 1,845,” he said.
Even though the Houlton sector’s 372 border encounters in 2023 are a small number in comparison to Del Rio, it was up 52 percent from 2022, with the majority of illegal migrants coming from Mexico, Romania and Ecuador. Bernal looks at the trend and sees different challenges.
Houlton sector agents are constantly monitoring the activity on the border. If they see a new trend, a new threat, a new gap, they identify it. Border patrol intelligence officers help analyze and assess the information that’s coming in and then Bernal and others decide how they need to change tactics to address those gaps, he said, adding that infrastructure and technology play a huge role.
“It could be a shift of personnel, maybe we move people from day to night shift. We might shift resources, we have mobile camera systems that we can relocate from one location to another or permanent solutions where we put up barriers or camera systems that are a little bit more fixed,” he said.
Bernal’s nearly 27-year career with U.S. Customs and Border Protection has taken him to many locations including Haiti and Arizona as well as Texas. During his career, especially as a member of the border patrol search and rescue team, he has been exposed to a lot of tragedy which he said informs the kind of leader he is now.
He was in Arizona when there were hundreds of deaths a day due to the harsh conditions in the desert heat. He was in Del Rio when there were hundreds of migrant deaths and drownings in the Rio Grande river.
He was in Texas when Gov. Greg Abbott called on state law enforcement to keep federal border agents from accessing migrants even when they were dying. He was in charge of agents when the state ran miles of barbed concertina wire along the river in Del Rio to keep migrants out and prevent border agents from getting to the people to help them, according to multiple news accounts and court documents.
He was there when President Joe Biden intervened to allow the agents to cut the concertina wire to access the migrants, a move that led to several court battles between the Biden administration and Abbott that are ongoing.
In a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; U.S. Customs and Border Protection; U.S. Border Patrol, along with Bernal and others, asked the court to remove an injunction keeping them from federal lands and from cutting the wires and other barriers.
In January, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor but the case continues with other Texas filings.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Bernal did not comment on the incident. They do not comment on ongoing litigation as a matter of policy, said border protection spokesman Ryan Brissette.
In 2010, Bernal was on the island in Haiti as part of his CBP duties when the earthquake hit, killing 300,000. He helped evacuate survivors and treated the wounded. He was acting CBP attache in the Dominican Republic and he is trained in trauma and rescue.
In 2022, he was on scene, inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 young students and two teachers.
“As time goes on, as you experience these very, very traumatic events it changes your perception of people in general,” Bernal said. “And for me, I like to think it had a positive impact. I call it post traumatic growth.”
He said he feels like he has an obligation to do the right thing, to take care of his workforce and to take care of the community that has entrusted him to do the job.
Living through something like that, especially in a leadership role and then transitioning to the Houlton sector, Bernal said he learned to appreciate the level of security he sees here.
“You also take whatever experiences you gained and apply them here,” he said. “It’s usually a little bit easier because you’re not dealing with 100 fires a day.”
Bernal said his experience has shown him that no one wins with illegal immigration.
The country doesn’t win when border security is diminished; the people who live in the communities don’t win because their privacy is being impacted and their lands are sometimes damaged; and the migrants do not win because it’s a very difficult trip, he said.
He talks about how migrants are exploited and abused and put through harsh environments and then when they get to the Southern border they have to sometimes swim across a raging river or walk for days across desert.
“If you survive, you are going to have some level of mental trauma from having lived through that,” he said. “ There’s got to be a better way. It’s not an easy fix but illegal immigration is definitely not the fix.”
All of Bernal’s family lives in Texas, but when the chief position opened for the Houlton sector, he applied. He said he always liked the idea of living in Maine and his wife, who will be moving from Texas after their daughter graduates from high school at the end of May, also wanted to move to Maine.
“I for one find it beautiful up here,” he said. “My wife does too and she can’t wait to get up here.”
It has been a huge change geographically and the work dynamic is different. Still, he said he looks forward to having the time to plan and implement his visions.
In February, just a week or two before two feet of snow fell in The County in one day, Bernal drove his 1995 two-wheel drive Chevy S-10 from Texas to Maine.
“I learned why I need a four-wheel drive,” he said.
With some of the situations he has had to live through, Bernal said he can now apply that knowledge and experience in his new surroundings.
“My goal is to leave this sector better than I found it,” he said.