A Border Patrol agent from the United States has been found guilty of making multiple migrant women bare their chests while he was supervising their paperwork for immigration in 2023. The individual, Shane Millan, aged 53, acknowledged his guilt to two charges of violating rights under the enforced color of law, as released in a press statement last week by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, located in the Northern District of New York.
At the moment when the offenses were committed, Millan was on duty at Welley Island in northern New York. His responsibility was the distant management of immigrants’ documents as they made their way into the country via the border in the south. The occurrence took place in August 2023. Millan was in an online meeting handling the documents of a female immigrant when he falsely claimed that her documents indicated that she had a tattoo located on her chest. This detail was part of an agreed plea.
The immigrant woman, who is known as P.L.R as per the court filings, informed him that she had no such tattoo. Irrespective, Millan instructed her to flash her chest. In compliance, she took off her shirt and bra, revealing her breasts to Millan through the web camera. Her one-year-old daughter was beside her during this event. By the end of the session, Millan requested once again to confirm that she had no chest tattoos.
When she declined, he said he would withhold signing her documentation until he could verify the absence of a tattoo. Consequently, she presented her chest to the camera again. Around two weeks later, on about the 25th of August, Millan was again remotely overseeing the documentation of another woman, named A.P.G in the records, with her husband and child in the same room.
Millan directed the husband and the child to leave the room and ordered A.P.G to bare her chest after he had been informed that the tattoo she possessed was close to her collarbone, which she had showed to him earlier. The woman unclasped her bra and unveiled her chest to the web cam, repeating the action at the end of the meeting to comply with Millan’s demands. According to the terms of the plea, several women were directed by Millan to act likewise in August 2023.
Additional evidence proved that Millan had looked up Spanish translations for specific phrases to instruct these women to reveal their breasts. The phrases he used translated to statements such as ‘I will require you to also lift your shirt and bra, please’ and ‘Could you lift it higher, please’. This manner of behavior was in direct violation of the institutional policy of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection that forbad agents from participating in voyeurism during such processes. For strip searches, they were mandated to receive approval from a supervisor.
Millan is scheduled for his sentencing on July 5 and could be up for prison for as long as two years and be required to pay a fine that could amount to $200,000, according to the statement provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.