Border Agent Gets 10 Years for Sexual Assault

A U.S. Border Patrol agent charged with sexually assaulting a Salvadoran woman immigrant near the border pleaded guilty Tuesday and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Agent Charles Vinson, 42, was to go on trial Tuesday on four counts of sexual assault that could have carried sentences of 25 years to life in prison.

Instead, in a negotiated agreement, he pleaded guilty to a single charge of “oral copulation under color of authority while armed with a firearm,” according to San Diego Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig Rooten, who prosecuted the case.

Superior Court Judge David Danielsen imposed a 10-year sentence.

Vinson “was facing some severe penalties,” Rooten said. “There were a lot of things that could have come out. He chose not to run the risk, and we agreed on a sentence that was acceptable to both parties.”

Immigrant advocates say the December 1995 incident underscores the vulnerability of illegal immigrant women and raises questions about the ability of immigration authorities to act promptly to halt abusers within their ranks.

Johnny Williams, the chief patrol agent of the San Diego Border Patrol sector, called the case an isolated one and said proceedings to terminate Vinson will begin immediately.

Vinson has been suspended without pay since March. He has been on leave since he was charged in December 1995.

“We are saddened by the actions of one of our agents, and we want to assure everyone that this is an aberration,” Williams said in a statement.

The 26-year-old Salvadoran woman told authorities that Vinson assaulted her on a trail near the Tijuana River at dawn Dec. 15, 1995. She had crossed the border alone illegally, while her husband and son, both documented residents who had crossed legally, waited in a motel. After the assault, she continued on her way and was apprehended by other Border Patrol agents. When she told them what had happened, they called police.

The woman, who had agreed to testify if the case went to trial, has been living in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

After Vinson’s arrest, the San Diego police and the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general unearthed other allegations of misconduct with immigrant women, investigators said.

Six years before his arrest, Vinson had been removed from a horse patrol after fellow Border Patrol agents complained that he was conducting aggressive and improper searches of women, one federal official said.

Rooten declined to discuss the other allegations, which prosecutors would have asked to enter as evidence against Vinson had the case gone to trial, saying only that Vinson “has been disciplined, to my knowledge, by the Border Patrol, for previous incidents involving female aliens.”

Vinson had been investigated at least twice for alleged excessive force, including the fatal shooting of a suspect, though he was cleared in both inquiries, and a subsequent civil lawsuit was decided in his favor. Vinson’s attorney, Thomas Warwick, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Allegations of sexual misconduct with immigrant women surface periodically in California and other border states, though full prosecutions and convictions are rare.

“This should send a message to other agents that we’re not going to tolerate other abuses,” said Roberto Martinez, director of the U.S.-Mexico Border Program for the American Friends Service Committee. “We hope the Border Patrol will screen agents more thoroughly so we don’t get Charles Vinsons on the Border Patrol.”

In January, a San Diego immigration inspector pleaded guilty to bribery and civil rights charges for allegedly soliciting sex from seven women in exchange for resolving their immigration problems.