10-15 is Customs and Border Protection’s code for “aliens in custody”; “I’m 10-15” is a secret Facebook group for current and former CBP officers whose participants create and share a torrent of racist and sexist memes, as well as jokes about the deaths of migrants in their care.
A particular target for their hostility is Congresswoman Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez, who was the first Member of Congress to correctly identify the CBP border detention facilities as “concentration camps.” In response, members of I’m 10-15 have posted doctored images of AOC performing oral sex through a border-facility fence, and also an image depicting President Trump forcing the Congresswoman’s head towards his crotch.
The group is three years old and has 9,500 members.
This is the latest in a string of revelations about the broad state of US law enforcement personnel; thousand of whom were revealed as members of secret fascist organizations that advocate the violent overthrow of the US government. On a more individual level, a court-ordered review of the personal messages of a CBP official who killed a Guatemalan migrant by running him down in his F-150 truck revealed that the officer routinely referred to migrants as “guats,” “wild ass shitbags,” “beaners” and “subhuman.”
In addition to casual racism, the messages on I’m 10-15 are full of sexist slurs and rape jokes. The CBP has the lowest percentage of female agents or officers of any federal law enforcement agency.
The group is also home to many conspiracy theories, including one thread that pondered whether the notorious AP photo of the corpses of Salvadoran asylum seeker Oscar Alberto Martinez and his two year old daughter, Angie Valeria M, had been faked.
