By Steve Neavling
A retired Los Angeles Police Department officer filed a lawsuit against CBP, alleging she was sexually assaulted and harassed by border officers.
Janine Bouey said she was crossing into the U.S. after a dentist appointment in Tijuana in June 2020 when a CBP officer was “flirtatious and pushy, and he pressed her to give him her home address,” according to the lawsuit, NBC-7 San Diego reports. After Bouey declined, the lawsuit alleges “the officer pulled her out of line and took her to the main building.”
Then a female officer “intentionally groped Bouey” over her clothes, the lawsuit claims, and she was placed in a “holding pen with other people,” even as she repeatedly said she was a U.S. citizen and a retired LAPD officer.
She was then forced to remove all her clothes except for her bra and underwear while “the police officer who had inappropriately searched me the first two times was behind me with a flashlight,” Bouey said at a news conference Tuesday. She was eventually forced to remove her bra and underwear.
“After I took off my clothes, I was made to turn around. I had to bend over, I had to squat multiple times at their direction,” Bouey said.
Andrea Guerrero, executive director of the community organization Alliance San Diego, said a lot of people were at fault for what happened.
“It was not one officer alone who harmed Janine. Everyone who came into contact with her was complicit in her degrading treatment,” Guerrero said. “That includes the officer who racially profiled her and pulled her out of line, the officer who shoved a dog’s nose into her buttocks, the officer who penetrated her genitalia, the officer who forced her to remove all her clothes and had her bend over while others looked, the officer who took her shoelaces, her jewelry and belongings, handcuffed her to a bench, dismissed her pleas and tossed her out the back door.”
CBP declined to comment on the case.
