'They are going to kill me': Former US Border Patrol agent discusses her journey to activist

Jenn Budd joined the U.S. Border Patrol to escape her violent and abusive home life. What she found, however, was a hostile work environment where racism, rape culture and bullying were encouraged, she said.

Her book, "Against the Wall: My Journey From Border Patrol Agent to Immigrant Rights Activist," recounts her life as she climbed the ranks of the Border Patrol, losing herself in the process and how becoming an immigrant rights activist helped her find herself again.

She spoke about the anecdotes in her book at an event hosted by the University of Arizona's School of Journalism last week.

Budd, born in 1971, grew up in Alabama in a Democratic household. She graduated from Auburn University with a pre-law degree and moved back home while thinking about her next steps.

She dreamed of becoming a civil rights attorney. However, her life at home was anything but ideal — she suffered physical abuse from her mother, who had an alcohol use disorder.

During that time, Budd heard the U.S. Border Patrol was hiring and decided it would be a good job to help her escape her troubled home life until she could apply to law school.

In 1995, she joined the Border Patrol and was sent to the Border Patrol Academy in Georgia. But what she encountered was not the agency she expected it to be.

Just three months into her training, she was raped by her classmate, she said. She reported the sexual assault and was told her only recourse was to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

She did not want to file an EEOC complaint because she had heard what happened to women who reported sexual assault: “Their training stopped,” Budd said.

In a Twitter post, she said although that was her order, she refused because she did not want her training to stop. An EEOC claim takes years, she said.

I just wanted to get the hell out of the South,” she said. “I wanted to start my job.”

In an email to The Arizona Republic, Budd said EEOC complaints have “become a way for the federal government to hide sexual assault and harassment.”

Her experience was not unique. She had been warned by fellow female colleagues to not drink with men or go to parties with them.

After her assault, she would be continually traumatized by her rapist throughout her career, she said.

Rising through the ranks in a hostile work environment

After she made it through training, she was stationed at Campo Border Patrol Station, near San Diego. The area was rugged and tough, plagued by freezing cold winters, when migrants often froze to death, and hot summers, when they would often die from dehydration.

She worked alone. Her colleagues did not want to work with her, claiming she filed a “fake EEO complaint.”

“This is what they do to women,” Budd said.

To punish her when she stood her ground on issues, and when she came out as lesbian, Border Patrol agents would schedule her rapist to work during her shift. He was stationed 65 miles away at Imperial Beach Station.

She described walking into their morning meeting before going into the field and seeing him.

“I just turned around and walked out and had to claim sick leave,” she said. “This is just how it is.”

Eventually, she realized that the migrants she was arresting every day were kinder toward her and treated her better than her colleagues. They didn't have criminal records; they were seeking employment.

By then, she also knew more corrupt Border Patrol agents than criminal migrants, she said.

Budd said she could point out those agents who had DUIs, who had raped people or who beat their wives.

Budd recalled one experience that stuck with her, when she arrested a group of migrants in the desolate, desert mountains of Campo.

It took the transport vehicle a couple of hours to pick them up. While she was waiting with them, she decided to chat with them and practice her Spanish.

“I couldn’t just sit there and ignore the people I’m arresting,” Budd said.

Stuck on the mountain together, they shared water, and the migrants offered her some of their tortillas; they laughed and joked, she recalled.

One member of the group had a law degree from Mexico and spoke perfect English.

He asked her if the Border Patrol “hunted” Canadians like they “hunt” Mexicans, Budd recalled.

“Do you treat them like animals?” he asked of undocumented Canadian migrants.

She responded that they did not.

He subsequently asked her why there was a difference between how Mexicans and Canadians were treated. Why were they militarizing and building walls on the southern border and not in the north?

She soon realized the uncomfortable truth.

“I guess it’s because of your skin color,” she said.

Eventually, the transport vehicle arrived. As the migrants were getting into the vehicle, the migrant who spoke English put his hand on her shoulder and told her to think about what she was doing, that she was better than this.

Embarrassed that the Border Patrol agent who drove the transport vehicle saw her treat the migrant kindly, and not “as I’ve been taught to treat them,” she referred to the migrant with a racist term.

“Just another (expletive) Tonc who doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Budd said to her colleague.

Budd said the Border Patrol has taught its agents to use that term, noting that it comes from the sound of a flashlight hitting the migrant in the head.

She spoke about the trauma of being an oppressor and how agents would frequently take their anger out on the migrants they were arresting. She admitted the job was taking its toll on her and she took her own anger out on migrants as well.

After she hit a migrant on the shoulder, she realized she needed to stop working in the field. This wasn’t her, she said.

Budd was later promoted to senior patrol agent before becoming a sector intelligence agent.

Watchdog report: Border Patrol unprepared for end of pandemic rules

During her time working in intelligence Budd investigated big cases, like migrant smuggling.

However, when she would present the investigations to her superiors, they wouldn’t do anything because her investigations failed to show how deterrence policies and Operation Gatekeeper were working.

They showed the opposite, Budd said.

According to the Office of the Inspector General, Operation Gatekeeper was a strategy implemented in 1994 that shifted the emphasis from apprehending migrants to deterrence and prevention.

Brush with death

Frustrated with the lack of action because of political agendas, she decided to investigate the chief of her station.

“I wanted to make a big statement,” Budd said.

Budd said she knew the patrol agent in charge was working with deputy sheriffs in San Diego and other Border Patrol agents to smuggle narcotics across the border, all the while changing operations to facilitate the drug smuggling.

Budd said she had intelligence on this from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

When the agent found out he was being investigated, he called her to his office, pinned her down in her chair and threatened her, Budd said.

Afterward, she reported the incident to her boss at sector headquarters, telling him she wanted to be a whistleblower and reveal what she found during her investigation.

Budd’s boss told her she probably misunderstood the situation and offered her a promotion at a position created just for her.

“That’s called promote to shut up in Border Patrol,” she said.

Budd refused the promotion.

That night, she returned home to a message on the voicemail saying that she needed to be in the field at midnight.

She had a feeling she was being set up.

“Am I being hyperbolic? Am I blowing this out of proportion?” she said she asked herself.

Questions like these swirled through her head. But she shrugged them off, got her gear ready and went to work.

Three hours into her shift, automatic weapons fire came at Budd from the south, ricocheting off rocks near her truck.

Refusing to shoot into Mexico — she had decided long ago never to do so as she knew the people who lived on the other side of the fence — she ran to her vehicle and drove away as fast as she could.

Budd called for help on the radio, but no one answered.

She had been talking to them all night. She knew they could hear her, she said.

After she was a safe enough distance away, she saw an unmarked vehicle coming toward her.

She took out her gun and pointed it at the driver, unsure of who it was.

Then as the vehicle got closer, she realized it was the patrol agent in charge she had been investigating.

He drove up to her and asked if she had learned her lesson — the shooters wouldn’t miss next time.

"They are going to kill me. I will either have to take the promotion and shut up or they are going to kill me," she said to herself.

It had been six years since she began working for the agency. Since then, Budd stopped believing in what she was doing.

She knew more criminal Border Patrol agents than criminal migrants trying to cross the border, she said.

Budd decided to resign in protest. Moreover, she was so disgusted with the law and court system she didn’t even want to go to law school anymore.

Over a decade later, still reeling from the trauma caused by her experiences in the Border Patrol, she tried to commit suicide.

At the lowest point of her life, she began her healing process.

She started attending talks given by migrants and realized her story and healing were linked to theirs.

“My healing would require me to recognize what I had done to them and that we are tied together whether we like it or not,” she said.

Budd is active on Twitter @BuddJenn.

The U.S. Border Patrol declined to comment for this story.

Coverage of southern Arizona on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is funded by the nonprofit Report for America in association with The Republic.

Reach the reporter at sarah.lapidus@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Former Border Patrol agent Jenn Budd discusses her journey to activist