A United States Border Patrol agent has pleaded guilty to abusing a migrant in U.S. custody. In exchange for pleading guilty, agent Jason Andrew McGilvray will be allowed to serve one year of unsupervised probation and pay a $25 assessment. The charges against McGilvray, however, typically carry up to one year in prison, a $100,000 fine, and one year of supervised probation. McGilvray also agreed to resign from CPB and surrender his security clearance, but will not be prohibited from being employed as a state or local law enforcement officer in the future. According to legal filings, McGilvray was on duty at the Calexico Border Patrol Station in February 2019, when he struck a migrant “in the face with the intent to deprive (him) of his constitutional right against unreasonable force during search and seizure.”

Despite a well-documented culture of xenophobia and racism in the agency, charges are rarely brought against agents. Since 2016, only two Border Patrol agents have ever been arrested for “mission-related misconduct,” and no agents have been arrested for civil-rights violations during that same time, according to CBP data reviewed by Quartz. “If anything, I’m encouraged to see that action was taken in this particular instance,” James Tomsheck, a former head of internal affairs at CBP, told Quartz. “Too many times, during my tenure at CBP, Border Patrol management would take no action in response to allegations of misconduct similar to this.”