The Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.–Mexico Border

Chapter 8. CBP Agent Nora Muñoz

Chapter 8 CBP Agent Nora Muñoz C BP agent Nora Muñoz always wanted to be in law enforcement. Since she was a little girl, she wanted to be a beat cop in her own hometown. But it was not her mother, father, or her eventual husband who helped make up her mind about her life’s work.1 “It was when I first saw Chips on TV,” she tells me. “The show with the two cops?” I ask her. She nods in agreement. After spending a few moments in silence, neither of us can remember the names of the actors or the characters they played on Chips. Long, blonde bangs framing her pleasant, sunworn face, the person across from me does not resemble the stereotype of a CBP agent with more than ten years on the line. At first glance Agent Muñoz easily passes as a soccer mom. But when she entered the door at Starbucks, customers unconsciously stood aside as she walked over to my table to introduce herself. Crossing to Safety 180 Dressed in slacks and a plaid top, Nora Muñoz conveys a military bearing incompatible with the outward image of a stereotypical Tucson housewife . Underneath the quiet inflections of voice and manner, Agent Muñoz has weathered tough experiences while on the job—not just from patrolling the line day in and day out, but also from the treatment she has received while attempting to perform her duties as a federal law enforcement officer. No Hollywood ending guaranteed, these experiences have exacted palpable scars. The Starbucks buzz around us, creating a wall of immediate privacy, is broken by shrieks from a teenage girl at the table immediately to our left. I flinch, but Nora Muñoz never looks up. The shrill voice reverberates off the Mexican floor tile, countertops, and walls, a perfect sounding board for the semihysterics of a sixteen-year-old with too much caffeine pulsing through her veins. Perhaps realizing her audience is not just the boyfriend sitting next to her, the drama queen falls silent. “Where were you born?” I ask as the routine noise resumes. Outside, a rare desert rain temporarily flattens the dust on the Tucson pavement. “Not far from here. Born and raised near Tucson, but in high school my father moved us around with his jobs. Then we moved back to the Tucson area. I met my husband here in college. Got married after two years. I’ve got two teenagers at home. Both girls.” After my book on the Border Patrol was published, a number of agents, both male and female, contacted me about the challenges they faced in sectors all along the Mexican border. Agent Muñoz wrote, “My experience . . . is that I have had many, many difficulties related to my gender. I actually fear retaliation. . . .” I contacted her, talked to her at length, and eventually arranged to fly to Arizona to meet with her. I was interested in Agent Muñoz’s struggle against gender discrimination because her personal narrative brought into focus issues the Border Patrol will not acknowledge. Only about 5 percent of all working agents in the Border Patrol are women. In station management, the percentages are far less. Although it is unacknowledged by the CBP, a major cause of this dismal percentage of female agents is pervasive gender discrimination in the workplace .2 This gender discrimination plays out in a variety of ways and contexts, including overt actions and behaviors of coworkers along with inappropriate remarks and “jokes.” It also can include Border Patrol management decisions that systematically discriminate against female agents in daily shift assignments, merit pay increases, and promotions, among others things. All Border Patrol agents, federal enforcers of the law, are themselves protected from gender discrimination in the workplace by the Equal Employ- CBP Agent Nora Muñoz 181 ment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Words, actions, and behavior of agents, supes, field operation supervisors, deputy sector chiefs, sector chiefs, and other managers, as well as all other employees of the CBP, fall under the jurisdiction of the EEOC. In July 2005 the Border Patrol “launched a national recruiting campaign to increase its ranks by an additional six thousand new Border Patrol agents by the end of December 2008.”3 In order to meet the number of Border Patrol agents mandated by the Bush administration and Congress as necessary to secure the...