I wrote this book to inspire and encourage other trailblazers facing crossroads in their lives to listen to their hearts - do what's right - stand up for justice. Not only will other lives be enriched, so too, will your own.

My fight with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was long, hard and fierce. But I was sent angels. I was sent angels in the form of Whistleblower and EEO attorneys, legislators, media entities, civil rights leaders, community activists and advocates.

I remembered what my parents had instilled in me about being respectful and doing the right thing and telling the truth.

Knowing my life would change forever and realizing my decision would affect my family, impact my livelihood and derail my career, I was ready to risk it all to make a difference.

I could no longer sit idly by watching the atrocities and injustices being committed against the American public. I knew it was time to "make a stand!"

In October 1998, I made a life-altering decision. I became a Federal Whistleblower (Truth-Teller).

PICTURE THIS: You've worked hard and decide to reward yourself with a trip to a sunny destination beyond America's shores. At the end of your wonderful vacation, you board the plane for your return trip home. You arrive at the airport but instead of making your way quickly and routinely through U.S Customs and Border Protection, you find yourself being subjected to an abusive pat-down, intrusive strip-search, x-rayed, probed internally, fed a laxative and handcuffed to a hospital bed for up to 4 days. If you are an African American, especially an African American female, this scenario, it turns out, was all too likely.

Article 5 of the Declaration of Human Rights states "that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment."

Article 13 of the Declaration of Human Rights states "that everyone has the right to leave this country and return to this country."

After witnessing first-hand this type of denigration against African American travelers particularly women and successfully putting reforms in place to protect them, I realized there was something even more sinister about to happen to the American people.

In March 2003, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) merged 22 federal agencies together totalling over 180,000 employees including my agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Over 73,400 of these employees were armed making this new department the most massive armed department ever in the history of the government.

Under the new department, they operated with excessive secrecy. Excessive secrecy could be just as dangerous as a terrorist coming into the country, so I set out to continue to inform the public about the new practices in the new department.

I realized that unless there were some type of oversight put into place - such as Civilian Review Boards - that United States Customs and Border Protection Officers would eventually go back to their old ways of singling out certain individuals such as African American international travelers and certain Department of Homeland Security employees who were speaking out against any and all types of injustices.

Because of the new department, I set out on another journey to educate the American people.

This book will make you aware of the extent of racial and sexual profiling - the blatant mismanagement, abuses of authority, prohibited personnel practices, corruption, and other unethnical practices carried out by federal law enforcement officials and what is being done to combat

it and how current attempts at reforms and legislation don't go far enough.

I will continue to fight for the rights of international travelers passing through U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) (www.cbp.gov), as well as for the rights of Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

(www.dhs.gov) employees and other federal employees.

This is a fight none of u