No more speaking Spanish at border?

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said they’re looking into accusations of racial profiling raised in a viral video showing a Border Patrol agent detaining two U.S. citizens at a Montana gas station for speaking Spanish.

Ronald Vitiello, acting CBP commissioner, acknowledged on Wednesday that he had seen the video and read the incident reports and has referred the case to the agency’s disciplinary arm for review.

“I want them to do all the fact-finding and I’m happy to come back and give you the full circumstance about what happened,” Vitiello told members of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security.

“But, bottom line, we expect our people to act with professionalism, and when they don’t we’re going to hold them accountable for that,” he added.

The nearly two-minute video shows a woman, identified as Ana Suda, asking a Border Patrol agent why he asked to check their IDs after they were about to pay for grocery items at a convenience store.

“Ma’am, the reason I asked you for your IDs is because I came here and I saw that you guys were speaking Spanish, which is very unheard of up here,” the unidentified Border Patrol agent responded.

When Suda accused the agent of racially profiling them based on language, he replied that, “It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store in a state where it’s predominantly English-speaking.”

The incident took place last week in Havre, Montana, about 35 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border. Border Patrol has the authority to detain and question individuals under reasonable suspicion of being in the country illegally within 100 miles of all U.S. borders, which includes both land boundaries and coastlines.

But on Wednesday, Vitiello said CBP flat-out forbids agents from using racial profiling to detain or even question individuals A nearly two-minute video shows a woman, identified as Ana Suda, asking a Border Patrol agent why he asked to check their IDs after they were about to pay for grocery items at a convenience store.

they encounter. He said these types of incidents don’t happen “very often at all,” and that agents look at a series of factors before approaching someone.

The incident led to an exchange between Vitiello and U.S. Rep. Nanette Díaz Barragán, D-California, who said Spanish was her first language.

“I get questions now of, ‘Well, does this mean I shouldn’t speak Spanish anymore?’ “she said. “As somebody who’s at CBP, what advice should I give them?”

Vitiello, who said he has also lived near the border for a number of years and is also fluent in Spanish, responded that, “It’s not something people should be concerned about if they’re here legally.”

Nonetheless, Vitiello said it’s not uncommon for individuals to record agents, as the two women did in this particular case, and that CBP is changing its policies on video recordings for accountability purposes.

“We’re gonna be investing in and deploying a number of cameras in the work space,” he said. “Some of those will actually be worn by agents.”

CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility is the agency’s disciplinary arm and is responsible for looking at officer and agent misconduct and mismanagement, among other things.

Results from its investigations are not always made public, but Vitiello said he would update committee members once the review into this incident was complete.

The two women involved in this case in Montana said that even after they showed their IDs, the agent still kept them for about 35 minutes

to 45 minutes.

Suda told several media outlets she plans to file a lawsuit.

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Census, an estimated 39 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home, including 1.28 million in Arizona.