Photo: Junfu Han/Detroit Free Press
Three U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have filed a federal lawsuit alleging employees at the Port Huron-Sarnia Border have racially discriminated against them and Blacks travelers over the years.
The Detroit Free Press reported that Johnny Grays, 42, and his unnamed co-plaintiffs are suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for routinely profiling Black travelers at the Blue Water Bridge between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario. The men claimed that they witnessed racial profiling and were also forced to participate.
Grays said in one incident that he was told to stop a Black family, and the driver wouldn’t turn off the car or roll down the window. As the driver reached into the glove box, Grays, believing he was going for a weapon, pulled his own gun only to learn the driver was searching for a key fob. He still fumes about the incident.
“I confronted management about it. I was livid,” Grays said, recalling the harrowing incident. “I said, ‘Look, had that not been me out there, you may have had a completely different situation.'”
After complaining about incidents such as this, Grays and his co-plaintiffs faced retaliation, the suit alleged.
The 42-year-old man, who has worked for CBP for 13 years, told The Detroit Free Press that he was placed on desk duty a year ago after filing the complaint.
“There needs to be some accountability for what’s going on. It needs to be exposed. These things are happening. Minorities and Blacks are being scrutinized at the border,” Grays said. “The main purpose of this lawsuit is to expose that and change that.”
Grays said that no matter who you are– if you are Black, your chances of being stopped at the border are high due to racial bias in the department. Even prominent government figures have been stopped.
U.S. diplomat Tianna Spears was stopped at the border 25 times in six months. Spears said that the CBP officers didn’t believe she was a diplomat during these stops in 2018 at the southern border, despite being able to identify herself.
“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,” Spears wrote in an article for Politico.
One of the reasons the men have also decided to speak up with this lawsuit is because people of color are highly underrepresented among CBP officers. Of the nearly 20,000 CBP employees; 62% are white; 26% are Hispanic/Latino; less than six percent are Black, and less than six percent are Asian, American Indian or Pacific Islanders.
These numbers impact the culture and the amount of racial profiling that goes on within the organization.
In a March 25 report, the ACLU released information on CBP stops at the Michigan border that revealed 95% of those were people of color, supporting the claims by Grays and his co-plaintiffs.
Deborah Gordon, the attorney representing the three plaintiffs, said this case is about workplace hostility and being forced to participate in practices that go against their core beliefs which involve the mistreatment of Black people, and protecting those people at the border against discrimination.
“Unlike an employment case where you go to your Human Resources department,” said Gordon, “as a traveler at the border, you have no voice.”