I can speak about my own rape, Senator Wyden.

By the time I logged on in California, the hearing was almost over in Washington D.C. Sitting in bed with my morning coffee and my laptop, I was not surprised to see the Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas case brought up by Senator Wyden as I had noted Alliance San Diego was doing a press campaign in the media here locally. I thought it was interesting the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on the case was released in time for this hearing. It is a shame it was not released sooner to educate the public on Chief Scott’s use of the illegal coverup teams in other cases as well. This was a missed opportunity to create public protest needed to push back on this administration’s nominees.

And then Senator Wyden said it:

Last December when I learned that former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott was selected as the nominee for commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), I felt a desperate fear that a senator might bring up his rape threat he shamelessly tweeted at me four years ago. When his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee aired five months later on April 30^th, I was no longer concerned. Neither Alliance San Diego (my counsel for the incident) nor anyone from senators’ staffs had reached out. I tuned in simply out of interest as a writer and expert on the Border Patrol.

To say I was blindsided is an understatement.

I suffer from complex post-traumatic stress disorder caused by violent trauma I both suffered and witnessed from my time in service and from my family. This and my suicide attempt in 2015 have been documented in my memoir, “Against the Wall” and in other interviews and articles extensively. I chose to reveal my sexual assault in the Border Patrol academy because I believed it to be the only way I could heal. I use my own experiences to expose the rampant rape culture of the agency and have proven that the reason there are never more than five percent women in the agency is because of this culture.

Don’t take my word for it. My work has been supported by several well-respected journalists. In 2022, The Project for Government Oversight (POGO) published “Protecting the Predators at DHS.” My assault was featured in the “Bad Watchdog” podcast further detailing that the rampant rape culture did not just exist in Border Patrol but was widely spread throughout DHS. Several senators called for hearings. None occurred.

A year later in 2023, Erin Siegel McIntyre (a photographer, author and assistant professor at the University of North Carolina) published “The Fierce 5%” podcast. Siegel McIntyre documented that the sexual assault hazing of female agents began with the first class to have six women in 1975. Their first victim was Ernestina Lopez who was fired for filing a complaint. Twenty years later, I managed to keep my job by refusing to file the only complaint allowed to me by academy staff, an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint. This podcast once and for all proved that the agency covered up rape games like the Game of Smiles played at Border Patrol graduation parties by instructors and trainees wherein they drug a female trainee’s drink and sexually assault her as a class. It was a gang rape.

Twenty years after my hazing, my rape was being used without my permission, without my knowledge to try and take down former Chief Scott. I wanted to vomit.

Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of reasons Chief Scott should not be commissioner of CBP. Aside from the Anastasio coverup, Chief Scott used the San Diego Sector Intelligence unit to detain and hide the witnesses to the Valeria Tachiquin murder because the coverup team was otherwise occupied at an event. That was why Scott showed up on camera within hours of the killing…he was covering for the absent coverup Critical Incident Team. In another example of the agency’s rape culture, Chief Scott then used the same team to stall the investigation into his supervisor who oversaw all the coverups and the team for Scott, Armando Gonzalez. Gonzalez was found to have placed cameras in the women’s restroom at sector headquarters and uploaded the videos to the internet along with sharing the videos with fellow agents. Border Patrol, FBI and many other women were discovered on the videos. Victims included members of his own coverup team who stated that Chief Scott delayed the investigation so that Gonzalez could destroy much of the evidence.

Then there’s the time Chief Scott decided to shoot unarmed women and children asylum seekers with pepper balls and tear gas as they stood in Mexico. The time he was found to have been a member of the “I’m 10-15” Facebook group of agents who published memes of Trump sexually assaulting Representative Ocasio Cortez and others. Chief Scott never left the group even after it was publicly revealed that agents encouraged other agents to “poop in their girlfriend’s vaginas” to establish dominance. Chief Scott has also ordered his agents to take the children of asylum seekers simply for crossing without inspection to request asylum, a misdemeanor. He has described migrant children as “not like our children,” more hardened, more criminal and thus deserving of such harsh treatment.

Most of all, Chief Scott is simply not qualified to lead CBP. The Border Patrol and CBP are not the same agency. CBP deals with trade and commerce as well as people seeking entry at the ports. Border Patrol deals with illegal activity in between the ports. Chief Scott does not have the education nor the experience to lead such an agency. His choice as commissioner appears to be more than just a thank you appointment for working against the Biden administration for four years and encouraging migrants to enter illegally by constantly lying and claiming the border was open. By putting Scott in charge of CBP, Trump is saying he wants CBP to be as brutal as the Border Patrol.

So, why use my rape threat case that occurred after Chief Scott left the agency? If Senator Wyden was so incensed over this rape threat against me, why did he not have a staff member call me and warn me? Media reported Wyden as grilling Scott on the rape threat, and others described the confirmation as “fireworks.”

And therein lies the rub…it was to get headlines.

Two days later, I was still reeling from the flashbacks. Mentally and emotionally, I was a mess. My mind swirled with memories of the rape, trying to get justice and getting none, having to work with my rapist all those years, then being forced to testify about it years later because some asshole chief decided to troll me, who lied about my Border Patrol record under oath to the judge and claimed I was a terrible agent, to this confirmation hearing wherein my assault was being talked about, yet my voice was nowhere in the room. The way I deal with the CPTSD, the flashbacks, the suicidal ideations that I cannot control is by talking or writing about it. My work is my therapy. Controlling my story is how I heal. Showing this vulnerability and being honest about this trauma is where my strength lies. When I realized my voice had been silenced, had been taken from me, I disassociated as I always do when the emotional pain becomes too much.

I feel like the one thing I truly own in all of this is was my rape story.

A few days after the hearing, I was headed to the grocery store when I just kept driving east. I’ve had suicidal ideations my entire life. Enough to know that when I head to my old patrol area, I need to reach out for help. I sent a handful of text messages and some voice messages to trusted friends. I stayed in my old desert mountains for about five hours contemplating it all; the betrayals by all these people to take my trauma for their own political purposes.

I could not understand why Senator Wyden would mention Chief Scott’s rape threat but not bother to call for investigations into the rape culture. What about the fact that the agency has lost several high-ranking chiefs in three years because of sexual misconduct? How about the fact that a deputy commander for BORTAC (Border Patrol SWAT) was just given lifetime probation after pleading guilty to sexual molestation of his own children for over eleven years? What about the agent in New York who just pleaded to demanding women seeking asylum show their breasts to him? What about the work done by POGO and Siegel McIntyre?

Looking out to the desert valley below, I realized that Senator Wyden did not care about the rape culture of the Border Patrol. He talked about the rape threat simply to have something salacious for the media to print. It was a show. A tough guy show to pretend he was standing up for this victim.

Senator Wyden has not asked for investigations, committee hearings, or anything regarding the agency’s rape culture. Perhaps that explains why he did not speak with me beforehand. He and his staff know I would demand they focus on all the sexual abuse and coverups not just of agents but of migrants and citizens as well. And that’s not something either party wants the public to know about because what I have written and said is dangerous to the agency, the federal government and both parties as they are responsible for allowing the coverups and rarely ever demand accountability.

I drove over the Pine Valley bridge spanning the over four hundred feet deep cavern below three times that day. For the first time since my attempt, I stopped with my hazards on because the suicidal ideations were so relentless and invasive. Why have I shared so much of my own trauma if this is what it gets me? As I sat disassociated from my feelings, thinking maybe I should just give up and do what the ideations wanted, one friend returned my text. He helped talk me back out of the fog and into the light. He helped me remember why I do this.

Suicidal ideations are a part of me as much as my freckles and tattoos. I have learned to accept them and prepare for their inevitable return. But I never thought I would have to plan for a senator and Alliance San Diego to steal my voice about my own assault. I never imagined they would use my rape in the academy as a public relations campaign against Chief Scott without asking first. Especially when everyone knows that sexual abuse is not disqualifying for this administration.

For what it’s worth, Chief Scott lied to Senator Wyden about the apology. While it is true that he waited for me after the hearing and spoke with me and my attorney, he did not apologize for the rape threat. He apologized for my understanding of his words as a rape threat.

Last I checked, the threat was still on his Twitter/X page.

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