The mother of a 12-year-old boy who was jailed at a Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas, says in an official complaint that an agent there harassed her over social media, The Washington Post reports, including making her watch him masturbate over video chat, “all while her 12-year-old son was in custody at the Border Patrol station in Clint, Tex., where he worked.”
The woman, who is also undocumented, said in the complaint, filed with Customs and Border Protection and currently under investigation by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, that her son came to the U.S. from Guatemala in April to reunite with her. She found out her son was in custody there because he called her—but their conversation was cut short and a voice she didn’t recognize spoke to her over the phone.
It was an agent, who told her, “You see, Señora, your son is okay.” She said she thought at the time he sounded “friendly,” and when he asked for her contact information to supposedly keep her updated on her son, she agreed, because, like any worried parent, she needed to know about her child. “Looking back on the conversation, the woman said that was the moment she ‘fell into his trap.’”
It was when the agent later called her that he exposed himself to her. “The woman said she escaped the Facebook call when her phone battery suddenly died,” which then appeared to anger the agent, because when she texted him the next day to plead to speak to her son, he told her, “I’m busy now.” Becoming ”fearful of retribution against her son, the woman found an immigrant legal-aid hotline through her church and called it. The hotline connected her to a legal-aid group, which promptly detailed her complaint in an email to senior CBP officials.”
During this time, the boy pointed to the same agent as “the man he and the other children feared … he said the agent cursed at the children, ridiculed some of them as ‘ugly’ and told them that they would ‘regret coming to this country.’” In one instance, the boy said, the guard caught them looking at his gun, which infuriated him. “He said we didn’t have permission to look at his gun, and he said if we touched the gun, he’d shoot us.”
CBP told The Washington Post that the case is under investigation. “The vast majority of CBP employees are dedicated, honest, compassionate and fair professionals,” spokesperson Matthew F. Leas claimed, apparently missing the news about the Border Patrol Facebook group where agents mocked the deaths of migrants in their custody and posted a meme of a member of Congress getting sexually assaulted. It’s almost like this agent’s behavior is perfectly emblematic of the toxic culture there.
The agency additionally refused to say whether the agent is still on the job at Clint, and if that place name sounds familiar, you’re right on the mark: This is the same location where agents treated a lice outbreak among children by giving them two combs to share, and when the kids lost one of those combs, officers punished kids by taking away their sleeping mats. Other kids have there have said they’ve been stolen from their families. Family separation remains a crisis.
Not only did this agent use his position of authority to abuse this woman, but she is now living in fear. Reports the Post, “The government knows her address, her name, her telephone number—everything, she said.” Her son has been returned to her, but she worries about what could now be next for the both of them, considering that CBP won’t say if this man is still on the job. “He could come, or he could send someone else. He’s the law, right?”