We’re in the midst of yet another election cycle defined by immigration and border policy. And a new exposé in Mother Jones reveals that Customs and Border Patrol may be concealing ongoing issues with sexual assault and abuse between agency supervisors and trainees.
In the piece, reporter Erin Siegal McIntyre focuses on the alleged rape of an agent she calls Violet — which is not her real name — and uses that story to unravel CBP’s long history of corruption.
As McIntyre recently told The Show, CBP has a tendency to attribute allegations like Violet’s to “bad apples,” but McIntyre’s reporting suggests that’s not the right framing.
Full conversation
ERIN SIEGAL MCINTYRE: I think the workplace culture of the Border Patrol is better described like this: Agents are more like pickles, and they're all in a jar, and they're packed in there, they're surrounded by brine, and that brine pickles you, right? It seeps in. You can't stop it. And, for example, more than one former agent has told me, "Oh, yeah, Tucson, that's the 'rapey' sector." And I don't think agents are necessarily, for the most part, "bad apple" actors. I think they're workers who have adapted to specific station-level workplace culture.
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah, well — those cultural problems acknowledged — in the case of Violet, there is, notionally, a regulation against fraternization between agents and their superiors. But, from your reporting, it sounds like those rules are not always followed.
MCINTYRE: Yep, that's a correct assessment. I've reported on multiple sexual assaults that have taken place at the academy. Aside from Violet's, one of the most notable happened many years ago, and it's sort of known by a nickname, "the game of smiles," or just "smiles." It involved an entire class of agents at the academy and instructors, as well. It was a party that took place at an instructor's house one night. They were playing as a sex game that sort of got out of control. There was heavy drinking, and over a dozen trainees ended up getting fired. It's also a case in which the Border Patrol has never publicly commented on what happened to the instructors who were there. We don't know if they stayed with the agency, if they left, and the same thing happened in Violet's case. When I asked CBP and the Border Patrol to comment — when I asked them many questions, sent them a whole list about this particular case — they didn't answer practically any of them. They provided sort of the blanket statements they usually give to the media, saying that they take all allegations seriously and that they're looking into it.
DINGMAN: So one of the other elements here is that, in an attempt to beef up recruitment — particularly in light of the Trump administration's focus on the border — the benchmarks around qualifications to become a CBP agent have been changed. Tell us a little bit about that.
MCINTYRE: Yeah, absolutely. So when there are political mandates to expand the number of boots on the ground, they'll say, hey, we're going to hire 5,000 more agents. And what tends to escape reality here is the fact that the agency already has a pretty difficult time staffing. And so, when there are calls to expand, that only exacerbates an already tough situation. And so, CBP tries to comply, and one of the ways they've done this is by, doing what some would say is, lowering standards or eliminating certain checks and balances for new agents. What that does, at the end of the day, is admit folks to serve as armed federal agents that maybe are not as qualified as they should be.
DINGMAN: This really underscores the very deep tragedy of this reporting that you've done, because the other really haunting line for me in your piece is "being a Border Patrol agent is one of the least lethal jobs in law enforcement, but agents kill themselves at higher rates than actual police."
Tell us more about the mental health struggles that you have found amongst CBP agents, and what, if anything, is being done to address it.
MCINTYRE: Yeah, and when you talk to agents themselves, there is a very familiar sort of trope that they say, and it is that they signed up to do a job because they wanted to serve their country in many cases. They wanted to help protect the borders. They wanted to chase bad guys, and that's what they thought they were signing up for. Yet, once you are, I think, on the ground, doing the job, the bulk of a Border Patrol agent's work is hunting down people who are oftentimes in desperate situations. And it also involves finding bodies in the desert. And up until very, very recently, CBP, as an agency, didn't offer training around this, and there was a prevailing attitude within the agency — which, frankly, is still there today — which is pretty much, "suck it up, buttercup."
DINGMAN: So this "suck it up, buttercup" attitude that is prevalent, based on your reporting, makes me think about the fact that Violet — to come back to her story — did not want to come forward when this incident happened to her. So, even though the agency has such an issue with hiring and retaining agents. Did she feel that she would be viewed as expendable if she became a "problem?"
MCINTYRE: I think what was probably going through her mind was the training she had been receiving, right? She had been there on the campus for weeks, and you got to keep in mind, this is a paramilitary training academy. It's boot camp. It is very tough. You are screamed at. You are cut down. They try to sort of psychologically level you in order to build you back up in their make and mold. And so, agents are trained not to complain, not to speak out, especially not about a supervisor. And so, when this assault allegedly happened, she confided in one of her classmates, and that classmate then did what they were supposed to do as a mandated reporter. They did call 911 that night, which is how I ended up ultimately finding police records.
DINGMAN: Yes, and as you report, when you contacted the agency about the incident, they initially denied it, and it wasn't until you presented them with evidence from the transcript of the 911 call that they confirmed that something had indeed been reported.
MCINTYRE: Right. I also asked CBP and the Border Patrol for records of all misconduct allegations over the past 20 years, and they gave me back a data set of just 186 complaints. This incident wasn't there, and there were also quite a few glaring emissions from Arizona.
For example, the case of the serial rapist Steven Charles Holmes, former agent. He was at a Tucson Sector. He was arrested twice — once in 2019, once in 2021 — that case didn't show up. Another one, the 2009 Brian Dick rape case, also a former Border Patrol agent who was convicted of raping one of his colleagues — a female agent — that wasn't represented in this data set from the Border Patrol. It is hard to trust data when it comes from the government in relation to the Border Patrol and any of these cases.
DINGMAN: And can you tell us where things stand currently with Violet's case?
MCINTYRE: I would love to be able to, Sam. All that the Border Patrol will say is that they are investigating, which, again, is something they never said until I brought the case to them. This case happened five years ago, whether or not what they say is accurate is kind of anyone's guess. I hate to say that, but it's impossible to know.
DINGMAN: All right. Well, a tough but very important story from our guest, investigative journalist Erin Siegal McIntyre, thank you for the conversation, Erin, and thank you for your reporting.
MCINTYRE: It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Sam.
