Border guard allegedly ordered women to …

In August last year, Millan allegedly ordered three women to show their bare chests on a webcam during their applications to enter the United States. A fourth was ordered to do so in her underwear. The agent was arraigned before a federal judge and released pending trial.

A recent report details how such misconduct by border guards is increasing as recruitment pressures have led to lower hiring standards. The document illustrated this by describing a reported rape in September 2019 at the Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, New Mexico.

The victim was Violet, a 25-year-old Latina single mother who had left her daughter at home in California to attend a training course. According to police, the suspect took the woman to her dorm room while intoxicated. When she woke up, he was “on top of her, having penetrative sex.” They identified the suspect as a middle-aged instructor and agent from Texas.

According to dozens of former agents, the Border Patrol's highly sexualized workplace leads to widespread harassment and assault. The first Latina ever hired as an agent, Ernestine Lopez, said she was raped by an academy classmate in the 1970sLopez was fired after her comments, but she later filed a lawsuit and settled with the agency.

Data from customs and border protection detailed 186 different allegations of sexual misconduct in the last 20 yearsBut even though the data came from a federal agency, she noticed glaring omissions regarding some very high-profile cases in which agents committed heinous crimes and were brought to trial or found guilty and convicted.

James Tomsheck, a former CBP internal affairs director, publicly accused the agency of covering up fatal shootings, creating a culture of subterfuge and deception, failing to provide adequate training, and making investigative errors. Tomsheck said sexual misconduct is “a very disturbing pattern and practice of abuse that appears to be part of the culture of the Border Patrol.”

Ronald Hosko, a retired FBI assistant director of criminal investigations, told Reveal in 2014: CBP officials estimated the corruption rate among their employees to be 20 percent or more.