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I Was a U.S. Diplomat.
Customs and Border Protection Only Cared That I Was Black. - POLITICO
primary source. I
Was a U.S. Diplomat. Customs and Border Protection Only Cared That I Was
Black. Most of my colleagues crossed the U.S. border with barely a glance.
Tianna Spears worked as
a Foreign Service Consular Adjudicator with the U.S. State Department from
April 2018 to October 2019, including posts in Ciudad Juarez and the U.S.
Embassy in Mexico City.
On Nov. 19, 2018, I was
driving from my home in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border to El Paso,
Texas, when a Customs and Border Protection agent in his booth looked at my
car, looked at me, and waved me to the left, through yellow poles separating
the lanes, and into one of a half-dozen parking spaces off to the side. He told
me to park under a roofed area and sit on a metal bench alongside my car.
I was a freshly minted
26-year-old U.S. diplomat, stationed at the U.S. Consulate General in Mexico,
just a few miles from the border. Ciudad Juarez and El Paso are effectively two
halves of a single metropolitan area of over 2 million people, and the line
between them is one of the busiest border crossings in the world. Residents of
one side frequently drive over the border to shop, go to the doctor or dine at restaurants.
All the diplomats working at the consulate visit El Paso frequently; some even
send their children to school on the Texas side, and cross the border as often
as twice a day for school activities.
If you’re working at the
State Department, like I was, and traffic isn’t bad, your trip across the
border usually just takes a few minutes. The border between Juarez and El Paso
has two lanes set aside for “trusted travelers,” people who travel frequently
into and out of the country and who’ve been vetted in advance by the U.S.
government. This group, which includes business travelers and diplomats, carry
a pass known as a SENTRI card, issued by CBP, which is supposed to allow
“expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival in the
United States.” You’re directed to special lanes and hold your card up to a
camera a few feet in front of a booth manned by CBP officers. Most of the time
the officers wave through travelers using SENTRI cards, so the whole process
takes just a few seconds. But if the officers have questions about the identity
of the travelers, or any other suspicion, they can flag them off to the side
for additional questioning and searches, including putting the car through an
X-ray machine.
This is called
“secondary inspection,” and sometimes being picked out for secondary inspection
is just arbitrary, like a random check by the Transportation Security Agency at
an airport. It's rare for U.S. consular officers to be regularly pulled over;
in addition to having a SENTRI card, we carry diplomatic passports. Some of my
fellow diplomats have told me they had not once been pulled into secondary
inspection after living in Juarez for years. One told me he was always greeted
with, “Welcome home to America, sir.”
But in the time I'd lived in Juarez — less than one month — I'd already been flagged for secondary inspection four times. This would be the fifth.
On one level, there was
no obvious reason they were stopping me. I had passed extensive background and
security checks to get my job and to qualify for a SENTRI card. CBP’s own
website says that to get a SENTRI card, “all applicants undergo a rigorous
background check and in-person interview.”
There was one difference
between me and my colleagues who rarely if ever got stopped: The vast majority
of my colleagues were white, while I’m Black. But I was a U.S. citizen, and a
diplomat. I had taken an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the
United States.” Could the color of my skin really be why I was being singled
out?
CBP is the largest police force in the country, and one that I was learning operates with some autonomy—a lot of rules that apply to other law enforcement agencies don’t apply in their zone, including rules on searches and seizures. They don’t have to get warrants to search you or your car.
Could the color of my skin really be why I was being singled out?
I didn’t want to make
waves. I was focused on doing my new job and doing it well. But on my father’s
advice, I did decide to start taking notes on my interactions with officers at
the border. After each border crossing, I would pull off the side of the road
to jot down what had happened, the names of the officers, and what they’d said
to me. (The accounts of my border crossings in this article, including the
italicized quotations from CBP officers, are based on those notes.)
This particular stop was
a Monday morning, and I was headed to El Paso to buy food for Thanksgiving
dinner. I complied with the officer’s instructions and sat on the metal bench
as my car was searched for about 15 minutes by officers and a police dog. CBP
officials asked my reason for travel to the U.S., the address of my U.S.
destination, who I planned to meet with, the duration of travel, and if the car
I was driving was mine. The CBP officer told me to stay on the bench with my
hands crossed. He placed my SENTRI Card and car keys on the windshield because,
he said—I don’t want you to steal the car.
This was the first time I decided to speak up. I asked to speak to the on-duty CBP supervisor. When he arrived, I asked directly what I’d been worried about: whether I was being racially profiled because I am an African American woman. The supervisor told me that the officers were just doing their job. Their main concern, he told me, was national security.
I told the manager that
I understood. I told him that I worked at the U.S. Consulate General in Ciudad
Juarez as a consular officer and I, too, was trained to uphold national security.
He told me again: The officers were simply doing their jobs. He requested my
diplomatic passport and left to make a copy in his office. Upon returning, he
told me that what I was experiencing was a SENTRI computer system error, and
not related to any discrimination or racial profiling. He assured me that the
issue would be resolved.
The issue was not
resolved. Far from it. After that, if anything, my treatment got worse. On Nov.
24, I was pulled into secondary again as I headed to the gym to work off
Thanksgiving dinner, and again in late December, as I was headed to visit
family for Christmas vacation. By my tally, I was pulled into secondary
inspection about two out of every three times I crossed the border.
But it wasn’t just the
frequency of the delays and searches that was becoming a problem. CBP officers
seemed to be escalating their harassment.
By early January, I felt
like I was experiencing more questioning and more overtly hostile treatment
each time I was pulled into secondary inspection. I was regularly laughed at by
U.S. officials as they asked my citizenship and my job. I would present four
forms of identification—my diplomatic passport, U.S. passport, ID granted by
the Mexican government, and my SENTRI card—which were regularly waved away.
Officers would say they didn’t believe I worked at the U.S. Consulate and
refuse to even look at my documents.
One time, an officer
told me, which I wrote down: Just because you say you work at the consulate
does not mean that you are not smuggling drugs into the country. I asked him to
explain. He responded, I don’t know, but I do know what drug dealers and
smugglers look like. He stepped forward, crossed his arms, looked at me up and
down, and said: You know what I mean.
Once I was harassed because
I asked the officers if they could drive my car through the X-ray machine for
me. I had been told this was an option, and at this point, I was feeling overly
exposed to the border X-ray machine. One officer denied that they could do
that, saying I would have to be pregnant for the officers to drive my car
through the machine. When I stated that I was not pregnant, this same officer
told me, maybe you should try getting pregnant, since you have issues complying
with the rules.
By this time, I knew that
what was happening to me wasn’t normal, but I was still trying to figure out
how to resolve it on my own. Becoming a foreign service officer had been my
dream, and I didn’t want to give up on it.
I grew up in Durham, N.C., which is a hub for higher education and technology, and has an established and proud Black community. My parents ran their own businesses, and I was raised believing that I could choose my own path in the world.
When I was 19, I
participated in a study abroad program in San Jose, Costa Rica. I spoke not one
word of Spanish. My host mother, Rosa, practiced with me every day, over pan
dulce and chisme. After weeks of vocabulary lessons and red light-green light
games with my host niece and nephew, we rode by the U.S. Embassy. I want to
work at an embassy one day, I told her, pointing. She smiled. My dream was to
achieve Spanish fluency, obtain my master’s degree in international relations,
and represent my country.
After college I lived
for more than a year in both the Dominican Republic and Spain, where I taught
English and honed my Spanish. I studied Spanish in Guatemala and went
backpacking across Europe and Central America. Back home in late 2016 when a
friend from my study abroad program sent me a job link to the foreign service,
I applied.
Becoming a foreign
service consular officer wasn’t easy. There were the job application, essay
questions, Spanish phone interview, oral assessment, conditional job offer, security
clearance and medical clearance. I had to move out of my apartment, move into
my parents’ home, wait for the official job offer, then move to D.C. After that
there was intensive training, the ceremony known as Flag Day on which I got my
country assignment, Spanish language training, and a week to pack and say
goodbye. A total of 577 days passed from the time I clicked send on the job
application to the day I stood inside the State Department building in
Washington, D.C., in April 2018 to start my job and training. I would start as
a foreign service consular adjudicator, making decisions about visa
applications. The job was designed to be a stepping stone into the diplomatic
corps; I agreed to serve five years overseas during which I could apply to be a
career foreign service officer. I stared at the colorful flags that decorate
the State Department’s lobby and felt proud of myself.
Ciudad Juarez is the
largest U.S. immigrant visa processing post in the world. It’s a challenging
place to work, not just because of the volume of visa applications, but also
because of the violence between drug cartels that was still going on while I
was there. We were supposed to keep our doors locked and windows rolled up when
we drove around town and were encouraged not to be out after dark. After I ran
into an applicant I had denied a visa to in the aisle of a Juarez grocery
store, I decided to do my shopping in El Paso. As an African American woman,
the people I rejected for visas would remember me and could easily identify me
on the street.
For me, as for most
consular officers in Juarez, visiting El Paso was a relief from the stress.
Normally, I went there two or three times a week. It was where I took my dog to
the dog park, did my grad-school homework in the Mas y Menos coffee shop, and
went to the gym. I had a sense of community in El Paso, as people smiled in
stores and said hello. It was a lively, multi-ethnic city, and sometimes they
spoke to me in Spanish, delighted that I could respond.
But to get to El Paso I
needed to cross the border.
As the months wore on, I
tried everything I could think of to lessen the harassment. I alternated
between the two different SENTRI lanes, in case Lane 1 would be different from
Lane 2. I tried immediately telling CBP officers at primary inspection my
occupation and residence, offering them my reason for crossing before I was
asked. I crossed the border at different times of the day or the week. I
changed into professional attire, like a blazer and dress pants. I removed sunglasses,
glasses, hats, and scarves.
There were only a few
consular officers of color in Juarez. They, too, had been pulled into secondary
inspection a few times at the border, but CBP officers seemed to be more
aggressive with me, probably because I had begun regularly to ask to speak to a
manager whenever I was pulled to secondary inspection. Nothing that the
officers gave me as a reason for being continuously pulled into secondary
inspection made sense. By this point, I was convinced that I stood out so much
that the officers knew who I was at a distance. Maybe it was my short curly
afro. On a few occasions, I could see the officer ahead reach for an orange
secondary inspection slip before I even pulled up to the camera to scan my
SENTRI card.
The following are
explanations that I jotted down after encounters with CBP officers:
* You have been selected
for a random computer-generated inspection.
* Your SENTRI card is not valid.
* We do not believe that you work at the Consulate.
* A Nissan Rogue is a known car make and model used by drug smugglers at ports of entry.
* Where are your license plates from? (I had North Carolina plates and they had been entered into the SENTRI system and approved as part of my application.)
* Is this a rental car?
* We don’t have you in the system. Is this your first time crossing the border? Ten minutes later at secondary inspection with a different officer, I was asked the opposite — Why do you so frequently enter the U.S.?
I was paying close
attention by this point to how other people were treated at the border,
comparing it to how I was treated.
A total of
577 days passed from the time I clicked send on the job application to the day
I stood inside the State Department building in Washington, D.C. in April 2018
to start my job as a foreign service consular adjudicator.
On Saturday, February 9,
2019, at 9:38 a.m., I was headed to my gym in El Paso and waited in SENTRI Line
1 behind three other cars. All three cars presented their SENTRI card to the
camera, waiting no more than five seconds before the CBP officer, who was
standing outside the booth, waved them through without even checking the
computer. I was next. I advanced to show my SENTRI card to the camera.
The officer and I made
eye contact. He then went inside his booth and grabbed an orange secondary
inspection form without checking his computer and began writing with his pen.
Seconds later, the officer asked why I was in Mexico and handed me the orange
secondary inspection form. When I asked him why I was being sent to secondary,
the officer told me that it was a computer-generated random inspection.
But I’d been watching
him the whole time. The officer wasn’t in his booth as I approached, so he
couldn’t see his computer, which means that he didn’t see my SENTRI card, and
couldn’t have known whether his computer had tagged me randomly for secondary
inspection. It seemed that as soon as he made eye contact with me, the officer
decided to send me to secondary.
Since I had moved to
Juarez in late October 2018, even when I wasn’t pulled into secondary
inspection, officers in primary inspection still made sarcastic comments, cruel
jokes and belittling jabs implying I was not a U.S. diplomat, not a U.S.
citizen and had stolen my own car.
The rule
was, if you didn’t hear from me in 15 minutes, call the consulate immediately.
Send someone to come get me.
It wasn’t just that
these kinds of comments made me angry—they also made me scared. At least twice,
a CBP officer put his hand on his gun when interacting and questioning me in a
way that felt to me like a threat.
In secondary inspection,
you were forbidden from using your cellphone, so I had no way of telling people
that I was running late, or why. I developed a system with my colleagues. I
would send a text message when I left my house, and again as I approached the
border. The rule was, if you didn’t hear from me 15 minutes after that, call
the consulate immediately. Send someone to come get me.
The harassment I
received at the border began to affect me emotionally and physically. I
developed a stutter. I could not look people in the eye. I was extremely on
edge all the time. In my bathroom sink, my hair fell out in chunks. I gave up
and cut all my hair off. My voice shook when I spoke. The simple thought of
driving would make my hands perspire and my heart race.
I felt defeated. I was
just 26 years old. My hands shook uncontrollably when I thought about driving.
I paced back and forth in my living room with my car keys in my hand, telling
myself I could do this; I could cross the border. I slept on and off during the
night. I set my security alarm, locked my doors and locked my bedroom door at 7
p.m. every night after work. I missed work due to illness; I took mental health
days.
How did I arrive to a
career as a U.S. diplomat, only to be bullied and harassed by U.S. officials at
the port of entry of a country I was born in and working for?
For the first few
months, I had been focusing on my job, the transition of moving, living abroad
and a new life. I’d worked hard to get this post, and really wanted to succeed.
I spoke to Juarez regional and assistant security officers in early January on the
phone about what was happening to me, but never heard back from them.
On Feb. 13, 2019, I
decided to put what was happening to me into writing. I started writing a
letter to upper management in the consulate describing the harassment. A
colleague saw me typing and asked me what I was working on. After reading my
letter, he was furious to learn what had been happening to me. He said I needed
to go upstairs and talk to someone immediately.
I pushed “send” on my
email, which was addressed to the consul general, the deputy consul general and
other consulate officials. The next day I would resend the email to more
officials and supervisors in Juarez and Washington, including human resources
officers.
Later that day, I met
with security officers who said they would contact CBP supervisors. However, I
can distinctly remember feeling that they didn’t understand. I remember trying
to convince them that what I was experiencing was real. At one point that day,
a State Department official told me that what I was experiencing wasn’t racism,
because personally, he had no issues crossing the border as a white man. I
couldn’t figure out what he meant by that. Would I need to explain to him that
you can’t experience racism as a white man crossing a border staffed largely by
white CBP officers? Would I need to explain the concept of racism?
At this point most of my
friends and some of my peers were aware of the situation, as was the
consulate’s upper management. Some colleagues offered solidarity. Others
offered stories of their acknowledgement of their white privilege, which did
not feel too helpful because this wasn’t about them. Others, also unhelpfully,
simply told me to stop crossing the border. A Human Resources officer in D.C.
explained that I should just cross at another port of entry, or not cross the
border at all.
Four of my upper-level
white supervisors in Juarez gave me their personal phone numbers and offered to
drive with me in my car to cross the border. While this may have been a sincere
gesture on their part, that’s not something I was comfortable doing. It would
have felt demeaning to need a white escort. I was as American as they were. We
had the same documents. We had the same diplomatic passport. What I wanted was
for the system to recognize that, and to treat me the same as my white
colleagues.
A few days after meeting
with management, I was harassed again on Feb. 16. And then on Feb. 17, at the
primary inspection booth, I was asked to roll down all the windows in my car,
open my trunk, and asked where my license plates were from. The officer asked
if the vehicle was my car. As a consular officer, I knew what kind of questions
to ask to make sure a person was who they said they were. But with me, the
questioning was accusatory, always premised on the idea that I was lying
somehow. I said yes. I asked why would the car not be mine, given that my car
is also registered in the SENTRI system; I reminded him that I provided this
information when I registered for Global Entry and SENTRI. My information was approved
by Customs and Border Protection in June 2018. Again, I was asked if the car
was mine. Rather confused, I replied yes and he asked me if I was responsible
for everything in the car. Again, I said yes.
I was still sent to
secondary inspection.
The officer I spoke to
at the primary booth closed his booth, walked over, and instructed me to grab
my valuables. I was told to sit on the metal bench with my back facing him.
Over my shoulder, I could see this officer and another officer rigorously
inspecting my car, the engine, passenger area and trunk. The officer I spoke to
unnecessarily slammed my car door and compartments inside my car, smearing his
fingers on my windows to the point that I got my car washed the next day. He
hesitated when inspecting the front passenger seat, pausing and looking up to
make eye contact with me. He yelled at me to turn around. Something did not
feel right in my gut; I worried that the officer had intentions of dropping
something in my car. When the search in secondary inspection ended and I
continued into the U.S., I thoroughly searched my car, especially the front
passenger seat, paranoid that the officer had put something in my car.
After just four months
in Juarez, I had reached a breaking point. I explained the harassment to a
State Department medical officer, who told me that I had begun to develop
symptoms of PTSD. I had been in touch with the State Department’s Human
Resources team, both in Juarez and in Washington, and was given the option of a
“compassionate curtailment from post”—that is, allowing me to leave my
assignment in Juarez 20 months early.
At the end of February,
I was transferred to Mexico City on a temporary assignment, and reassigned
there permanently a few weeks later.
While in Mexico City, I
inquired about my case via email with Juarez management; the only response was
from the consulate’s Homeland Security attaché, who had contacted CBP. He told
me that CBP’s computer system had been making a mistake, confusing me with
someone else with a similar name. Another Tianna Spears? While it didn’t make
sense, he told me that CBP promised him the error would be corrected by March
1.
On March 30, I returned
to Juarez to pack up my belongings and say goodbye to colleagues and upper
management. As I crossed into El Paso to pick up my dog and buy supplies for my
new apartment, I was flagged into secondary one last time.
This time, though, the
CBP officer in secondary inspection was kind. And our interaction was very
different. When I told him that this was the first time going through that
checkpoint that I hadn’t been harassed, he told me that what I was experiencing
wasn’t my imagination, and encouraged me to keep moving forward. Look, he said:
We both know you’re being pulled over because you’re Black. But you worked hard
to be here. You can’t let anybody take that from you.
In Mexico City, I found
a therapist and a yoga studio. I read motivational books and tried to make the
best out of the situation. My managers in the nonimmigrant visa section of the
embassy where I worked were kind, talking through cases over morning oatmeal,
laughing at Friday happy hour socials, always having an open-door policy.
But the damage had been
done. I was later diagnosed by the embassy’s health unit and my therapist not
only with PTSD but with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety
disorder. My anxiety wasn’t helped when I checked my LinkedIn account and
discovered that officers from CBP in El Paso had started viewing my profile. I
deleted my profile picture and set my profile to private. After the LinkedIn
viewing continued and I was contacted by a journalist who somehow heard about
my harassment at the border with CBP, I contacted Juarez upper management with
my concerns. State Department officials in Juarez never responded.
I immediately met with
officials with Human Resources and Public Affairs in Mexico City and told them
about what was happening and how I was still being harassed by CBP. Both
officials told me that I would need to request permission to speak to the
journalist about my experiences at the border with CBP. I was told my responses
would be edited by State Department officials if necessary. When I asked if
this would have any repercussions on my career, not one person could give me an
answer. This had a chilling effect on me. It felt like an effort to silence me.
I tried to continue
focusing on my job in Mexico City. I continued to send emails to upper
management consulate officials in Juarez, asking for updates. In April 2019,
the Homeland Security attaché, still the only one to respond, told me that my
case was referred to CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility and that I
should “expect to receive an email from that office soon.” The attaché told me
that I should report any future harassment at the border to that office, a
toll-free phone number, or the CBP Office of Inspector General Hotline.
But it wasn’t future
harassment that was my concern. Now that I was in Mexico City I wouldn’t be
crossing the border any more. What I wanted was the State Department and CBP to
address the harassment I’d already received, to hold those responsible
accountable.
Friends and family
visited me in Mexico City, but by September 2019 I was having a hard time
getting out of bed in the morning. The State Department didn’t give me the
option of working in the United States until my health improved. HR officials
told me I would owe the State Department thousands of dollars to reimburse them
for my relocation if I left, since I‘d served less than one year after being
moved from Juarez to Mexico City. I didn’t have thousands of dollars, nor did
HR know the exact amount I would owe. I felt that this situation was out of my
control, that if I’d never experienced the harassment by CBP I wouldn’t be in
this situation. It wasn’t my fault. I kept trying to make it work.
I said
goodbye to my friends, gifted them my plants, and returned to my parents’ arms
in America. I was 25 years old when the job commenced and 27 years old when I
left.
By October 2019 I was
beginning to have suicidal thoughts and feared I would kill myself if I stayed
in Mexico. A few weeks later, the medical unit found me unfit to serve abroad
due to my deteriorating health—this meant the State Department wouldn’t require
me to pay back my relocation expenses, but it would bring my foreign service
career to an end. I said goodbye to my friends, gifted them my plants, bought a
plane ticket home, and returned to my parents’ arms in America. I was 25 years
old when the job started and 27 years old when I returned home.
I was now unemployed,
without medical insurance, and spent my time in expensive biweekly counseling
sessions to continue to work on my PTSD, depression and anxiety.
On my return flight to
the United States, I landed at the airport in Houston for a layover. As I
passed through passport control, U.S. Customs and Border Protection pulled me
aside and searched me. During all my travels as a private citizen, that had
never happened. Clearly, I was still being singled out by CBP, even at the
airport. And despite what I’d been promised, CBP appeared to have done little
to fix their records. I was convinced that CBP’s records had absolutely nothing
to do with the harassment I endured. It was only because of the color of my
skin.
To date, 18 months after
my letter to upper management, I never got a response to my complaint from the
CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility or from the State Department’s
upper management in Ciudad Juarez, or the consulate’s security officers. I was
never notified of an investigation into my complaint or informed of an outcome.
In the course of editing
and fact-checking this article, POLITICO contacted the State Department to
request comment. A department spokeswoman provided a statement that read in
part: “All department employees should be treated fairly, whether at the Department,
an embassy or consulate overseas, or in interactions with agencies like CBP
while traveling to and from the United States.” She added that “with respect to
the specific case of the former State Department Consular Fellow, we understand
that an investigation of the matter was conducted by the Office of Professional
Responsibility and we refer you to CPB for the details.”
POLITICO also contacted
Customs and Border Protection to request comment. In a lengthy statement, CBP
spokesman Matthew Dyman disputed Spears‘ account of her border crossings,
saying that she was referred to secondary inspection during 12 of 43 crossings,
and that “all referrals were system generated.“ The language of the statement
did not make clear whether CBP keeps records of referrals to secondary
inspection made for other reasons, such as an officer’s discretion.
Dyman said CBP’s Office
of Professional Responsibility referred Spears’ complaint to CBP’s Office of
Field Operations, which is the department that staffs border posts. The
spokesman said that an integrity officer in the El Paso Field Office reviewed
video of Spears’ crossings and interviewed officers, and the review was
completed on April 19, 2019. It was not clear from the statement whether the
footage and other evidence was reviewed by CBP officials other than officials
located in the El Paso field office.
“There is no evidence to
substantiate her allegations of racial discrimination, harassment, unfair
detainment, false accusations against her or threats by port personnel,” Dyman
said in his statement. “CBP completed a full investigation and found no
evidence of misconduct. To the contrary, evidence supports that officers acted
appropriately, professionally, within policy, and in accordance with their
legal authorities.”
“CBP takes all
allegations of employee misconduct very seriously and has instituted policies
pertaining to abuses of authority. Complaints of unprofessional conduct are
recorded, investigated and appropriate action is taken against CBP officers who
are found to have violated policy,” Dyman said. “CBP found no evidence of
misconduct in this case, as such, there is no information regarding any
disciplinary action.”
In a follow up email
exchange with a CBP spokesman, POLITICO asked whether the video footage
reviewed by CBP officials included audio as well as video; the spokesman
responded that the footage does not include audio of Spears’ encounters with
CBP officers. POLITICO also asked whether CBP records include referrals to
secondary inspection made at an officer’s discretion; the spokesman did not
directly answer the question, responding that, “All the referrals for Ms.
Spears were auto-generated.“
Spears has filed a
Freedom of Information Act request for CBP documents including the video
footage CBP cited in their response; as of publication, she had not received
any documents or video footage in response to that request.
Since I returned from
Mexico City, I’ve been living back home in Durham, finishing a master’s degree
in Global Studies and International Relations, and looking for a job.
I’ve done a lot of
thinking since I was separated from the State Department about whether it was
the harassment by CBP or the lack of response from the State Department that
was the most damaging. I’m positive I’m not the first diplomat of color to
experience the extra burden of difficulty race can make when navigating
interactions with Customs and Border Protection at the Juarez border, or any
U.S. border. However, regardless of citizenship, job position, or any other
factor, not one person should be treated like I was.
Despite everything I’d
achieved, despite my status as a U.S. diplomat, despite the fact that I worked
for the U.S. government, CBP officers still viewed me, and treated me, based
first and foremost on the color of my skin. They assumed they could get away
with it.
But after months in
therapy, thinking, and weighing what I went through, I feel that officers
repeatedly asking me if I’ve stolen my own car, refusing to look at my
documents, and treating me in a discriminatory and aggressive manner to the
point where I developed mental health conditions and my hair fell out, are not
people just doing their job for the sake of U.S. national security. It’s
racism, harassment and bullying, and it causes damage. It’s damage that had a
life-shattering impact on my health, life, and career.
In the end, I believe
that my employer, the State Department, could and should have done more to
support me. It’s telling that I never heard back from State Department
management in Juarez. I wonder how many other Black women have fled overseas
posts because they were inadequately supported by the State Department in
situations like mine.
It’s not unheard of for
diplomats of color to face racial discrimination while representing the United
States. But what makes my situation different is that the racial harassment I
suffered wasn’t from a foreign government or residents of a foreign country —
it was from sworn law enforcement officers of my home country, the country that
is supposed to recognize and protect my rights.
Despite everything I’d achieved, despite my status as a U.S. diplomat, despite the fact that I worked for the U.S. government, CBP officers still viewed me, and treated me, based first and foremost on the color of my skin. They assumed they could get away with it.
And they did, perhaps, until I decided to tell my story.
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