Customs worker fighting for job

A transgendered U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee is fighting for her job after an investigation of her workplace harassment complaint concluded that she had lied.

Tracy Sturchio, of Colbert, has denied the allegation that she sent herself a fax containing derogatory language in order to prove discrimination.

The telecommunications specialist and former supervisor said she will deny the allegation again Nov. 16, when she appears before John Santos, executive director of technology operations for Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Information and Technology, who will decide whether she will be fired.

Sturchio is currently on paid administrative leave from the office, which provides field support for the Border Patrol.

“Every time I’ve filed a complaint they have charged me with something,” said Sturchio, who in June 2005 lost a discrimination lawsuit against the Border Patrol in U.S. District Court in Spokane. “I’m being treated like an enemy combatant.”

The Border Patrol and the Office of Information and Technology are both agencies of Customs and Border Protection, which is under the Department of Homeland Security. Agency spokesmen said they could not comment on pending disciplinary action.

Sturchio, 58, born Ronald Sturchio, underwent gender change surgery in 2004. Sturchio said she suffered from a gender identity disorder, which she said she experienced in childhood and that resurfaced in the 1990s after three marriages and five children.

She was informed in August that a discipline review board had proposed removing her from her position and from federal service after an investigation by the CBP’s Office of Management Inspections and Integrity Assurance determined she had provided misinformation to both the Equal Employment Opportunity office and investigators.

Sturchio, a former Border Patrol employee, maintains she has been the victim of ongoing harassment by the agency as a result of a previous EEO complaint and her failed lawsuit against the agency.

Although there is no federal statute against discrimination on the basis of gender identity, the CBP has a zero tolerance policy against discriminatory harassment by co-workers.

In her new complaint, Sturchio said she continued to be harassed because of her gender identity, that she lost her interim supervisory position because Border Patrol employees did not want to work with her and that she was the object of disparaging graffiti on an agency vehicle.

Over the Jan. 28-29 weekend, a fax was sent from the Border Patrol’s Spokane Station on the Newport Highway to her office on Market Street in north Spokane. Among other things, the missive labeled her a “fag transvestite” and “an abomination.”

Sturchio was among several CBP employees who had access to the station offices, according to the investigative report. The fax was also sent to two union offices.

The report concluded that there was no evidence that the vehicle graffiti was written by Border Patrol employees, and Sturchio was the only person who “had first-hand knowledge of all of the topics” referenced in the fax.

In a response to the report, Sturchio, through her Spokane attorney, Larry Kuznetz, said the investigators’ allegations lacked corroborating evidence and that “relevant leads were not addressed.”

Kuznetz wrote that Sturchio passed a voluntary lie-detector testwhile a co-worker who cast suspicion on her refused to take a polygraph. The response attributed “discrepancies” in her testimony to Sturchio’s emotional state and the anti-depression drugs she is taking.

Through her EEO complaint, Sturchio seeks to be reinstated as a supervisor as well as back pay for that position and $125,000 for “mental and career damage done.” She also asks that sensitivity training be given to Customs and Border Protection employees.