Does Anyone Read the Border Patrol's Press Releases?

By David North on January 28, 2016

The following is the complete and untouched text of a Border Patrol press release sent out at 10:01 pm, January 27.

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1. zzz mm Start Newsroom Page Failover Test From PA to AZ
01/27/2016 08:33 PM EST

zzz mm Start Newsroom Page Failover Test From PA to AZ Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque tristique fringilla risus a porttitor. Vestibulum nunc lorem, molestie sit amet hendrerit ut, auctor commodo justo. In et...

My first reaction was that the Patrol was showing off its linguistic skills in an odd way, that it now could write in Latin as well as English and Spanish. Being unskilled in languages, I was both puzzled and impressed.

I showed the release to my wife, Ruth, who laughed and said it was simply junk text used by a graphic designer. Wikipedia agreed with her, stating:

In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum (derived from Latin dolorem ipsum, translated as "pain itself") is a filler text commonly used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation. Replacing meaningful content with placeholder text allows viewers to focus on graphic aspects such as font, typography, and page layout without being distracted by the content.

So maybe the Border Patrol's press releases will not be in Latin, but will be more attractive than before. We will see.