Senior Border Patrol Agent Faces Charges of Sexually Assaulting Colleague

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/us/border-patrol-sexual-assault.html

Senior Border Patrol Agent Faces Charges of Sexually Assaulting Colleague
The assault accusation is at the center of a #MeToo moment for the nation’s border-security force.
By Manny Fernandez and Mitchell Ferman
Oct. 5, 2019, 12:37 p.m. ET

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The senior agent, Gus Zamora, 51, who retired in the aftermath of the investigation, was arrested in Tucson and charged with assaulting a female agent who was his friend and colleague. Mr. Zamora is married to Gloria Chavez, a veteran agent who has been a mentor and inspiration to the agency’s female officers and who has one of the Border Patrol’s highest-profile assignments — she was recently appointed as interim chief of the El Paso region, asked to take over a troubled sector that had received national scrutiny for the overcrowded and filthy conditions of its facilities.

The female agent, identified in court documents by her initials of R.W., had planned to meet with Mr. Zamora that evening in May for dinner. R.W. told the police that she had considered Mr. Zamora a kind of mentor. He was more than 10 years older than her, had more seniority with the agency and had climbed the ranks to become an assistant chief in the nearby Yuma sector. But shortly before they met at a restaurant in Tucson, she said, he had sent her a provocative text message.

He asked her, she told the authorities, if she had “dressed up” for him. It was one in a series of flirtations and advances he had made to her over a period of years that she said she had rebuffed or ignored. But on this night after dinner in Tucson, he went too far, she claimed in court documents. R.W. said Mr. Zamora bought round after round of tequila shots, took her back to his hotel room and sexually assaulted her.

R.W. reported being assaulted to the police on May 25, two days after the encounter. Six weeks later, in July, Mr. Zamora was indicted by a Pima County grand jury in Tucson on three counts of felony sexual assault and one felony count of kidnapping. He retired from the Border Patrol on July 31, 21 days after his arrest. A pretrial hearing in the case is scheduled Monday in Arizona Superior Court in Tucson.

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