More than 23 years ago, a US border patrol official issued a warning: slurs against people crossing the border would “not be tolerated”. Four years ago, the group’s parent agency issued guidance condemning one word in particular. Yet reporting last month found that it’s still being used in the agency regularly – in shockingly callous ways.
“Tonk” is used as slang for a migrant. As the reporter Roque Planas writes at HuffPost, the consensus is that it refers to the sound of a heavy object, like an agent’s flashlight, hitting a person’s head.
