For second time this month, Border Patrol agent pleads guilty to assaulting migrant while on duty

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday August 28, 2019 · 8:54 AM PDT

2019/08/28 · 08:54

EL PASO, TEXAS - JUNE 26: A U.S. Border Patrol vehicle passes a 'Border Patrol Access Only' sign near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 26, 2019 in El Paso, Texas. Acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) John Sanders submitted his resignation in the wake of a scandal after lawyers reported that detained migrant children were held unbathed and hungry in a U.S. Border Patrol facility in nearby Clint, Texas. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

For the second time this month, a Border Patrol agent has pleaded guilty to assaulting a migrant while on duty. Under a plea agreement, Jason Andrew McGilvray has agreed to resign from Customs and Border Protection, will undergo one year of unsupervised probation, and will be banned from further work in federal law enforcement due to the assault.

According to court documents, the agent “willfully struck” his victim, “B.S.S,” when he was taken into custody after crossing the border without authorization this past February. McGilvray committed the assault “with the intent to deprive B.S.S. of his constitutional right against reasonable force during search and seizure,” the documents continue.

Immigrant rights advocates are rightfully calling the plea deal “barely even a slap on the wrist,” though it does rid an agency that has only become more out of control of one more violent agent who shouldn’t have been in the job in the first place. It was just two weeks ago that another agent, Matthew Bowen, pleaded guilty to hitting a migrant with his truck, and then lying about it to investigators. Bowen, like McGilvray, also accepted a plea deal.

There are too few convictions of violent agents, considering that the government has had to pay some $60 million over a decade to settle legal claims against Border Patrol, including for deadly incidents. Richard Bolen of the Border Patrol Victims Network said McGilvray deserved, at minimum, a felony charge. “In my opinion, what they’re doing is really encouraging more of the same type of behavior.”

There’s always an effort to dismiss these assaults and deaths at the hands of Border Patrol agents as the work of a few bad apples, but just look who’s leading the agency. It’s been weeks since chief Carla Provost was confirmed to be a member of a racist and vile Facebook group that mocked the deaths of migrant children on U.S. watch, but Provost is still in her job, and CBP won’t even comment on whether she’s under investigation for her participation.

And remember, this is the behavior that we know about: Neither the February assault nor the ensuing case “have previously been reported,” the website Quartz reported, while Los Angeles TV station KTLA reported that “legal proceedings against … McGilvray both opened and closed on Thursday in San Diego federal court.” Other cases, meanwhile, remain shrouded in secrecy. It’s been over a year since Claudia Patricia Gómez González, an unarmed indigenous woman, was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent, and we still don’t even know the agent’s name.

For second time this month, Border Patrol agent pleads guilty to assaulting migrant while on duty

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