Thread: Thousands of Agents Train to Protect Border at Facility in West Virginia

(videos at source link)

By Scott MacFarlane, Rick Yarborough and Steve Jones

U.S. Customs and Border Protection trained 8,600 employees in the past year at its remote, highly secured facility in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a sprawling campus gaining new attention with the debate over the construction of a new wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and an increase in the force of U.S. border agents.

The agency’s Advanced Training Center, which was built almost a decade ago on federal land through legislative efforts of the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), provides a regimen including firearms, self-defense, tactical and rescue training. Operators built a pair of small-scale border fences next to which trainees practice how to stop assaults and rescue injured agents.

Training sessions include a virtual simulator program providing dozens of scenarios for which border agents must prepare, such as a potentially violent traffic stop and a mass shooting at a theater.

“The training center may not be on the southern border, but we have students from all over the nation,” said 29-year U.S. border agent Clark Messer, who was recently named director of the facility.

Self-defense training at the facility took on new importance amid a spike in assaults against border agents. Records and testimony provided to Congress in November showed a 230 percent increase in attacks against agents from 2015 to 2016.

Arthur Trebs, a border agent posted in Bellingham, Washington, said assaults are an increasing threat.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/investi...416079263.html

Fill it up with new hires and get them to the borders ASAP.