U.S. Border Patrol agents across ranks and regions routinely referred to unauthorized migrants using the derogatory slur tonk, according to emails and text messages disclosed to HuffPost under the Freedom of Information Act.

Higher-ups in Washington and within the Border Patrol itself have told agents that discriminatory and racist language undermines the agencys mission at times singling out the term tonk specifically and threatening disciplinary action for its use.

But its use remains surprisingly routine, even in government communications that in some cases bore email signatures of supervising agents, the documents show. HuffPost submitted the FOIA request in 2020, asking for agency communications that included the word. The agency began a partial release of the documents last week.

The widespread use of the term hints at the hostility many within the agencys rank-and-file hold for the people they police, who mostly are migrants fleeing humanitarian crises and economic disasters in Latin America.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a HuffPost request asking whether any Border Patrol staff members have been disciplined for using the term.

Thats Pretty Bad

The word tonk does not have a clear origin. Some say its an acronym for some variation of Traveler, Origin Not Known or Traveler Outside Native Country.

The broadest consensus among those familiar with it, however, is that the slur comes from the sound made by slamming a heavy-duty flashlight or baton over a migrants head.

Though no one can say for sure, the flashlight definition has adherents within the agency. In an email with the subject line Tonk, a Border Patrol agent in the Spokane, Washington, region asked whether someone found that head wound with his maglite. (The names in the documents released to HuffPost were redacted.)

When a supervising agent in New Mexico sent an email in January 2019 about a really bad memo, the recipient responded that he bought a T-shirt for a colleague that looks like the following... It will give you a good laugh I hope.