Seeking privilege over equality in the US Border Patrol.

The most common question asked of me about the US Border Patrol is how Latino and other minorities can join such a racist and brutal organization. The optics of watching young Latino men chase other Latino men in Los Angeles throwing them in vans to later determine their citizenship seems a bit hypocritical. That is because it is hypocritical. I have written on this in the past to specifically address the Latino question, you can find that article here. 

But this question extends past race. 

Back in the day before Twitter became a fascist propaganda machine, I communicated with a young writer who often wrote about race, privilege and equality. Known as @CaffenatedLiving on her social media platforms, Alexandria Bennett opened my eyes to how to think and talk about what seemed to me and many others to be illogical. When people asked me to speak on the large Latino population of the agency, I often gave the long-winded reasons that were discussed in the linked piece above. I mentioned this to her in a conversation and asked if there was a more logical way of explaining this phenomenon. 

“They are seeking privilege over equality,” she said. “And so were you as a lesbian and a woman.”

I sat staring at the response because I had thought this issue did not affect or pertain to me and my experience in the agency. My six years in the agency flashed before my eyes. All the things I tolerated just to wear that green uniform, to Bleed Green, and why? It drastically changed me, my life and it obviously still obsesses me. Why did I do that to myself? Why did I join given all the warnings? I was told months before my sexual assault that if I did not date an instructing agent, I would likely be sexually hazed into the agency, and I was. Why did I stay six years?

I had spent many years trying to understand why Latinos joined. Their responses were just like mine: needed a job, sounded interesting, wanted to serve my country, lack of opportunities, good pay, sense of adventure. We all could spout these reasons off in our sleep. And when people asked Latino agents why they would join an agency that targeted their own people or people who were of the same heritage, they gave the same response I did when questioned why a gay woman would join such an agency - equality. 

Upon entering the academy, I immediately recognized that being a female agent was a rare and unique thing. There were two female Border Patrol instructors (female agents) when I went through the academy. They called it “a man’s agency.” We were warned to shut up and put up if we wanted to keep our jobs. Women who complained about the sexual assaults were failed on their physical exams by less than one second while others were terminated under the guise of failing the subjective Spanish tests. 

Being openly gay was not allowed. The federal government could legally fire us simply for admitting our sexuality and often did. But this was normal for me and others in the LGBTQ family in the mid 1990s. This was the culture and policies we had all grown up with. Being gay was always a rare and unique thing in these organizations, and to some extent I believed this was the cause of the low number of women in the agency. I did not believe the warnings the other women had given me upon entering the academy. I thought they were exaggerating or lying like men always said women did about these things. 

That is until I was hazed. If you think about it, it was hypocritical of me to join as well. Few if any women join, I stayed even after being raped into the agency and becoming a member of the Fierce 5% for my silence, after I knew about the illegal coverup teams, after witnessing the human rights violations and taking part in them. And while I did not stay the full twenty years and do not receive any retirement or pension, it took literal bullets being fired at me, hitting just a few feet from my body before I wised up. I often looked down on Latinos who joined and treated people of their culture brutally, but it had never occurred to me that I was doing the same thing. 

I could see this now after reading Alexandria’s words.

Like many Latinos, I also joined because I was seeking privilege. The status, respect and authority that I naively believed came with the uniform actually only came with the white men wearing the uniform. The agency constantly taught us we were all the same; not Latinos, not women, not anything but Border Patrol agents. Yet that is not how the agency is structured or run. Latinos, Blacks, Asians, Indigenous, women and LGBTQ are only hired in small controllable amounts. This helps the agency appear diverse even though it is not. 

Agents who rise in rank are predominately white men who promote each other. We see this today with the agency still over half Latino, yet chiefs remain heavily white. Latinos who make it into the higher ranks must adopt and maintain the white standards of the agency which means covering up agent crimes, continuing the rape culture and protecting the agency from claims of discrimination. This is the same for the women, and LGBTQ. You can be a part of the agency, but you are never really a part of the agency. We are all tokens helping these agencies appear diverse while constantly being discriminated against. 

If you need more proof of this, The agency’s highest ranking female agent, Chief Gloria Chavez, was just fired for allegedly taking gifts from a wealthy tequila maker in Mexico while Chief Jason Owens who was with her was allowed to retire and left unaccountable. This woman gave her entire life to the US Border Patrol, and they threw her under their detention buses. They screwed her over as they do all of us. But then again, she knew this.

That is not equality. It is privilege.