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Border Patrol agent admits to forcing migrants to show him their breasts
Shane Millan, after ordering a female migrant to expose herself, allegedly told her, “Welcome to the U.S.A.”
A former U.S. Border Patrol agent has pleaded guilty to abusing his power to force female migrants to show him their breasts before letting them into the country.
Shane Millan, 53, pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of using his authority to violate migrants’ civil rights. He was arrested in August when prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the U.S. District for Northern New York accused him of commanding three women to show him their breasts via webcam and a fourth to do so while her bra was on.
“Millan further admitted that he told these women that his requests were for legitimate searches incident to admission into the United States, but he knew his demands to see the victims’ breasts were for his own gratification,” prosecutors said in a news release.
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In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop two other charges against him. He faces up to two years’ imprisonment and a $200,000 fine when he’s sentenced in July.
Millan’s attorney, Robert Wells, did not respond Tuesday to requests for comment from The Washington Post. Millan is no longer employed with the Border Patrol, said Mike Niezgoda, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, parent agency of the Border Patrol.
On Aug. 10, 2023, Millan was stationed at Wellesley Island in Upstate New York where he virtually processed a woman and her 1-year-old daughter in a room in Eagle Pass, Texas, more than 1,700 miles away, according to the plea agreement Millan signed. Although he received information to the contrary, Millan told the woman, who is identified as P.L.R. in court documents, that her immigration file indicated she had a tattoo on her chest. When the woman said she had no tattoos, Millan ordered her to show him her breasts to prove it. The woman did as she was told before sitting down while Millan processed her application.
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At the end of their meeting, Millan told her that he needed to see her breasts again, the plea agreement states. When the woman balked, he told her that he wouldn’t sign her paperwork unless she did. She relented, putting her baby on the ground, then showing Millan her breasts once more.
Millan was satisfied. “Welcome to the U.S.A.,” he allegedly told her.
About two weeks later, he virtually processed another woman at Eagle Pass where she was in a room with her husband and children, according to the plea agreement. At the start of their interview, Millan ordered the woman’s husband and children to leave the room. Once they were alone, he asked the woman, identified as A.P.G. in court documents, if she had any tattoos. Yes, she replied, one near her collarbone, which she showed him by lowering the necklines of her shirt.
Unsatisfied, Millan told her to lift her shirt and bra, which she did, showing him her breasts. At the end of their interview, he ordered her to do it again and she obeyed, the plea agreement states.
Millan did the same thing to multiple other women in August 2023, prosecutors said. To do so, he used his government computer to learn how to say multiple phrases and commands in Spanish, including:
- “Your file says you have tattoos across your chest.”
- “I will also need you to lift your bra, please.”
- “Can you lift it higher, please.”
- “For the safety of your pregnancy, I will need you to lift your shirt please.”
Millan’s actions violated the policy of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That policy requires agents to get a supervisor’s approval for strip searches and prohibiting voyeurism, which the agency defines in part as “requiring an inmate detainee to expose his or her buttocks, genitals, or breasts,” according to the plea agreement.
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Vicki Gaubeca, associate director of the nonprofit Human Rights Watch’s U.S. immigration and border policy program, said her reaction to the accusations against Millan was “here we go again” because she’s heard of Border Patrol agents physically and sexually abusing migrants for years.
But Gaubeca said Millan’s confession and guilty plea were good news, an example of an agency rooting out and holding accountable bad actors within its ranks.
Still, she described Millan’s conviction as the exception that proves the rule: The Border Patrol for years has fostered or at least ignored a “culture of impunity” in which agents feel like they can abuse migrants without consequence. In fact, Gaubeca said she believes some agents see it as part of a prevention-through-deterrence strategy in which they make crossing the border so traumatic that migrants don’t do it in the first place.
Gaubeca said Millan’s brazenness hints at that underlying culture.
“Why, even though he knew it was wrong, did he think it was still okay to engage in that kind of conduct?”
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