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CBP removed civil rights history, including a James Meredith desegregation story, from its website during Black History Month

U.S. Customs and Border Protection deleted several historical "Did you know?" stories from its public website between February 2 and February 9, 2026, during the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. The removed content included an account of Border Patrol agents protecting James Meredith during the 1962 desegregation of the University of Mississippi, along with biographies of Black explorer Matthew Henson and other Black and female CBP figures, all of which had been posted by CBP since March 2014. A CBP spokesperson told Unraveled the agency was "looking into" the removals but did not explain them.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
Washington, D.C.

Abuses documented

Actors

Sometime between February 2 and February 9, 2026 — during the 100th anniversary of Black History Month — U.S. Customs and Border Protection removed a set of historical stories from the "Did you know?" history page on its public website. An analysis comparing web-archive snapshots found the stories present on February 2 and gone by February 9; all had originally been published by CBP in March 2014 and had survived unchanged through the first Trump administration.

Among the deleted stories was an account of President Kennedy deploying more than 300 Border Patrol agents, alongside U.S. Marshals, to protect James Meredith as he registered as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi in 1962 in the face of an armed mob. Also removed were biographical stories about Black explorer Matthew Henson, Anna C.M. Tillinghast (the first woman appointed a District Commissioner of Immigration), and Border Patrol's historical role addressing trafficking of women and children. A story about Robert Smalls, a formerly enslaved man who commandeered a Confederate ship and later became a U.S. congressman, remained on the site.

Asked why the pages were taken down, a CBP spokesperson told Unraveled the agency was "looking into" the matter, without further explanation. The removal followed a broader pattern of the Trump administration altering federal government content related to Black, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous history and civil rights across agencies including the Department of Defense, Arlington National Cemetery, the National Park Service, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Updates

2026-07-20 — CBP restored the removed civil rights stories without explanation [2]

By July 20, 2026, the "Did you know?" stories CBP removed in February 2026 -- including the account of Border Patrol agents protecting James Meredith during the 1962 University of Mississippi desegregation and the biography of explorer Matthew Henson -- had reappeared on CBP's website. The agency did not publicly announce or explain the restoration; CBP has still not accounted for either the removal or the reinstatement.

Why we recorded this

Government-controlled historical sites are part of the public record of American history, including its hardest chapters. When a federal agency quietly deletes its own published account of Border Patrol protecting a Black student during desegregation, during the very month set aside to mark that history, it substitutes silence for an accurate chapter of its own past. CBP has not explained the removals beyond saying it is looking into the matter. This archive records when agencies alter the historical record they control rather than let it stand.

Sources

  1. Civil rights stories removed from Border Patrol's website during Black History Month — Unraveled primary accessed July 20, 2026
  2. CBP History: Did You Know? — U.S. Customs and Border Protection primary accessed July 20, 2026

See also