In 1995, Jenn Budd, a young gay woman from Alabama, left her home state to join the Border Patrol in San Diego, California. She was 24 when she joined. Having never even heard of the Border Patrol, her only knowledge of Mexico was from television shows. During hiring, they told her she would be stopping drug smugglers. She left the Deep South excited to live in a state where being gay was not taboo.

As a trainee and agent, she witnessed countless racist and misogynistic actions by her peers. Black people were often called “the N-word,” and Latinx migrants were called “wetbacks” and “toncs,” which is “the sound a flashlight makes when you hit a migrant in the head with it, with your flashlight.”

Jenn Budd, former senior Border Patrol agent, now immigrant rights activist. Photos courtesy of Jenn Budd (left and center) and act.tv (right).

“There was never any more than two women who graduated from the class, and there was never any more than two Blacks that graduated in the class…They purposely keep the Black population down, and they purposely keep the women’s population down,” Budd said.

After dinner in October 1995 at the Glynco Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia, Jenn was sexually assaulted by a male classmate. He offered to walk Jenn home, “saying it was dangerous for a woman to walk alone in the dark.”

Sexual harassment is part of daily life in Border Patrol. Women close to graduation would tell more junior agents to never leave drinks unchecked, because they would be drugged. Never go into male agents’ rooms, because they would be raped.

“I laughed because we were on a closed campus with only current and soon-to-be federal agents. I was naive. He pushed me against a brick wall. I punched him in the face and thought my hand would break. He was 6’4”. I was 5’5” and he had 100 lbs on me. He punched me in the rib cage and in the face leaving a black eye and busted lip. He held me up off the ground against the wall with one hand and sexually assaulted me. I don’t want to go into the details.” Budd stated.

Visibly beaten the next day, the assailant bragged about it.

“And then they made me fight him the next time we had physical training, and they all laughed and thought it was funny,” Budd said.

When she complained, she was told to file an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint. She wasn’t allowed to call the police to report it, because “they said we were a federal academy.”

According to Budd, her story of sexual assault has not been reported. It is her hope that other female Border Patrol agents speak out about the abuse they have experienced from their male colleagues in the agency.

There is little recourse for trainees who are sexually assaulted. Women who file EEO complaints are targeted and labeled “EEO filer.” Many quit, due to having their training stopped with investigations that often lead nowhere.

Sexual harassment is part of daily life in Border Patrol. Women close to graduation would tell more junior agents to never leave drinks unchecked, because they would be drugged. Never go into male agents’ rooms, because they would be raped.

“And if they don’t rape you, then they make you play… Circle Blow,” or “The Game of Smiles,” Budd said, where a female trainee, “drugged up by spiking her drink,” is made to “go under the table and give blow jobs, and the first guy to smile, loses the game, and has to drink or whatever.”

Upon graduation, male Border Patrol officers were taken to Tijuana by supervisors who paid for them to be with sex workers and bought them drugs and alcohol. Porn lined the walls and filled computers at the station.

“They routinely put used condoms in my mailbox. They routinely jizzed in my truck, and I’d have to clean it before I went out into the field. They would take dumps in the one female toilet I had and leave them there… They left a live rattlesnake in my truck one night,” Budd said.

They took her into a high desert area, on a hill in the middle of nowhere, at night, and left her there with no radio, and she had to find her way back to the station the next day.

A CBP Spokesperson said that since the incidents fell under the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and not CBP at the time, questions about these allegations would need to be referred to the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (DOJ OIG). The spokesperson said this conduct “is not in line with our code of conduct and is not tolerated.”

Neither the DOJ nor the Investigations Division Offices at the OIG’s Washington, D.C. Field Office responded for requests for comment.