I Was a U.S. Diplomat. Customs and Border Protection Only Cared That I Was Black.

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.  In this article for Politico, she tells the travails of being harassed at the U.S./Mexico border by Customs and Border Protection officers.  She 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. 

Spears was stopped frequently.   In her words:  “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.”

KJ