U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has a long history of its officials engaging in racial profiling and harassment at the U.S.-Mexico border. Tianna Spears, a former U.S. diplomat stationed at the U.S. Consulate In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico has shared her experiences of being racially profiled and discriminated against by U.S. immigration officials. Tianna Spears is a black woman and has shared that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from the constant harassment she received while traveling across the border for her job. Spears said, “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.”
Around October 2019, a medical unit in Mexico found Spears “unfit to serve abroad due to [her] deteriorating health.” This brought her career as a U.S. diplomat to an end. Even with her diplomatic passport and SENTRI card allowing for expedited clearance, “Spears estimates that CBP officers required her to go through ‘secondary inspection’ approximately two out of every three times that she crossed.” See here.
Read her full story here.