Thread: Drug smuggling Jeep gets stuck on makeshift border ramp

Lukeville CBP Officers Seize Hard Drugs


Release Date: February 19, 2019

TUCSON, Ariz. – U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Arizona’s Port of Lukeville arrested a Mexican national Friday after seizing more than 13 pounds of heroin and methamphetamine.


Officers removed a
combination of meth and
heroin from the intake
manifold of a smuggling
vehicle

Officers referred a 23-year-old Caborca, Sonora, Mexico woman for a secondary inspection of her Mercedes SUV as she applied to enter the United States from Mexico Friday morning. A CBP canine alerted to an odor it is trained to detect, leading officers to the discovery of more than 12 pounds of meth within the vehicle’s intake manifold. The drugs are worth an estimated value of more than $36,000. They also seized more than a pound of heroin, worth more than $35,000.

Officers arrested the subject and turned her over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, while the drugs and the vehicle were seized.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the unified border agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with the management, control and protection of our nation's borders at and between official ports of entry. CBP is charged with securing the borders of the United States while enforcing hundreds of laws and facilitating lawful trade and travel.

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-m...ize-hard-drugs

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

I have to ask myself: Who would be more likely to know the facts, Border Patrol Agents who work on the border every day or someone who lives hundreds of miles from the border and has never worked one day on the border?

You're completely ignoring the possibility of an agenda. Isn't it possible that there are border agents that want to draw attention away from the open border areas. I think the fact that there has been a number of BP agents busted in the past for working with the drug cartels takes what I'm saying beyond a conspiracy theory. There are a lot of areas border patrol has said fencing isn't even necessary.

Honestly, the reason I think some of the BP agents prefer the open slat style border fencing is so contraband such as drugs and money can be passed through the slats. The Border patrol is not immune from corruption. I'm sure a large majority of the BP agents are hardworking, forthright and honest in their duties, but not everyone will ignore thousands of dollars flashed before their eyes on a regular basis.

After first seeing the bollard fencing, my first concern was the space between the slats. Let's not forget it was Trump who first promised us 30-ft concrete walls with steel rebar. However, the BP convinced him of their preference for the bollard style fencing.

Records show corrupt officials along the U.S.-Mexico border have included local police, elected sheriffs, officers with DHS agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol. There have even been National Guardsmen temporarily called to the border for duty who have been prosecuted.

Sorry to get off topic, but I wanted to back up my last comment.

New Report Details Dozens of Corrupt Border Patrol Agents—Just As Trump Wants to Hire More

“They have a de facto immunity because they have no meaningful oversight.”

BRYAN SCHATZ APRIL 24, 2018 6:00 AM



Gregory Bull/AP

In the first week of his presidency, Donald Trump requested that Congress give Customs and Border Protection (CBP) enough money to hire 5,000 new agents to patrol the US-Mexico border as part of his immigration crackdown. The move raised eyebrows among immigration activists and experts, who had been monitoring the agency’s poor discipline record and had seen cases of corruption spike in the wake of such hiring sprees.

New records obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO)reveal that their concerns may not have been misplaced. Since 2016, there have been 40 cases of corruption-related charges against CBP employees, including 13 since Trump took office. Overall, 80 Border Patrol agents and 127 CBP officers have been arrested or charged with corruption-related crimes since 2004. Records show that between February 2017 and mid-March 2018, CBP employees racked up charges including embezzlement, human smuggling, theft, bribery, breaking and entering, money laundering, providing false statements, and using firearms during drug-related crimes.

In early 2016, the Department of Homeland Security declared that corrupt border agents “pose a national security threat” and found that the CBP had a “broken disciplinary process.” James Tomsheck, the former head of Internal Affairs at CBP, has repeatedly warned about corruption at the agency. He maintains that its background investigations of new employees are sorely lacking, that it sweeps corruption allegations under the rug, and that it largely resists efforts to clean house. In an interview with Mother Jones last year, Tomsheck claimed that the head of the Border Patrol agents’ union had “opposed every integrity proposal” he had made during his eight years at CBP. (The National Border Patrol Council did not respond to requests for comment.)

The Department of Homeland Security has declared that corrupt border agents “pose a national security threat.”Some of the crimes committed by border agents on the job have been extreme. While on patrol in March 2014, Border Patrol agent Esteban Manzanares kidnapped, assaulted, and raped two Honduran girls and their mother. He committed suicide when FBI agents surrounded his home. In late 2016, the discovery of a headless body a few hundred feet from the shore of South Padre Island in Texas led investigators first to an assassin for the Gulf Cartel and eventually to a Border Patrol agent who had run guns and drugs across the border.

The 210 corruption cases documented by POGO are just those that have come to light and in which legal action was taken. In 2014, the American Immigration Council published data on 809 complaints of alleged abuse by Border Patrol agents from 2009 to 2012. In 97 percent of the cases, Border Patrol took no action on the complaints. The same year, Tomsheck toldReveal that at least a quarter of violent incidents involving Border Patrol agents were “highly suspect,” adding that “in nearly every instance, there was an effort by Border Patrol leadership to make a case to justify the shooting versus doing a genuine, appropriate review of the information and the facts at hand.” In 2016, Reveal identified 140 CBP officials who had been arrested or convicted for acts of corruption including weapons charges, drug smuggling, and human trafficking.

Experts worry that increased hiring without improved oversight will make a bad situation worse. Joshua Breisblatt, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council, says that in previous hiring surges, “You saw a huge increase in the budget for Border Patrol and CBP, but you did not see a corresponding increase for the appropriate oversight. You did not see a corresponding increase in the DHS civil rights and civil liberties budget; you did not see an increase in the DHS Inspectors General budget. For the longest time, CBP Internal Affairs did not actually have the ability to investigate shootings done by Border Patrol agents.” Tomsheck argues that in order to fulfill Trump’s hiring request, CBP is taking an “unacceptable shortcut” by outsourcing background checks to private companies to recruit agents more quickly.

In a statement, POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian said, “Without appropriate oversight, corruption can—and will—spread like a disease, even within law enforcement. The danger of corruption is significantly increased as the president pushes to quickly hire new agents to beef up security at the border.” As Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego and co-chair of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, told POGO, CBP employees “have this extraordinary power, and they have a de facto immunity because they have no meaningful oversight and accountability.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...-to-hire-more/

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

I have to ask myself: Who would be more likely to know the facts, Border Patrol Agents who work on the border every day or someone who lives hundreds of miles from the border and has never worked one day on the border?

I have to ask myself do they always tell the truth about what they do know?

The sheriff of a county known to be the Gulf Cartel’s main corridor into Texas recently spoke out against more border security investments. The Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office is also working to shake the memory of its former sheriff, commander, narcotics unit, and crime stoppers program being tied to Mexican cartel-linked drug traffickers.

In a recent article by the Texas Observer, Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra spoke out against spending billions of dollars for a border wall or fence, claiming it would do little to alleviate human or drug smuggling.


“First of all, we already have one physical barrier, that’s the Rio Grande. To cross it, [migrants] use a raft. To cross a 22-foot-high fence, they’ll use a ladder,” Guerra is quoted by the outlet. Neither the article nor Guerra mention that the proposal also calls for more technology, manpower, roads, and other infrastructure.


While the article tries to paint a picture of a safe border area with a low crime rate, the publication omits the fact that the statistics presented by Guerra are only for the rural parts of the county and do not include figures from the 20 municipal police jurisdictions. While better-funded cities like McAllen have a low crime rate, smaller towns like Weslaco and La Joya show opposite trends.


The article also makes no mention of the dark history that follows the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office itself. Since taking command, Guerra is working to improve the public’s perception of his agency. The image was severely tarnished by his predecessor Guadalupe “Lupe” Trevino, who just finished a five-year prison sentence for taking campaign money from a Gulf Cartel-linked drug lord living in the county. Trevino’s right-hand man, former Commander Jose Padilla, also spent time in prison on bribery charges involving cartel funds. Around the time of Trevino’s downfall, the Panama Unit–an entire street-level narcotics task force made up of nine Hidalgo County Sheriff’s deputies and the sheriff’s son–also went down for escorting drug loads and selling some of the protected cargo. Former Hidalgo County Crime Stoppers program coordinator James Flores also went to prison for helping stage drug raids and busts.


Before Trevino, Brigido “Brig” Marmolejo, another Hidalgo County Sheriff, also went to prison in 1994 for taking money from a Mexican drug lord. According to prosecutors, Marmolejo took a monthly $5,000 bribe and additional sums from Homero Beltran Aguirre. The money was meant to earn preferential treatment for Beltran Aguirre, who at the time was housed at the Hidalgo County Jail. Marmolejo would let Beltran Aguirre use his office for conjugal visits with various women.

Former DEA agent: Trump's wall will 'have very little effect on the flow of drugs'


Riley, a 32-year DEA veteran, told the Final Round “the wall will have some effect, and maybe a lot, on illegal alien migration, but it’s going to have very little effect on the flow of drugs. We know that 80% to 90% of the hard narcotics — heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana — come through our existing checkpoints.”

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Former DEA agent: Trump's wall will 'have very little effect on the flow of drugs'


Riley, a 32-year DEA veteran, told the Final Round “the wall will have some effect, and maybe a lot, on illegal alien migration, but it’s going to have very little effect on the flow of drugs. We know that 80% to 90% of the hard narcotics — heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana — come through our existing checkpoints.”

I personally do not believe that 80-90 percent of hard narcotics comes through ports of entry. Maybe for the dummy crowd trying to get them through. Cartels rule the border with scouts and tunnels and other methods to avoid detection or capture. Stephen Miller said to Chris Wallace last Sunday that we don't know what we don't know as it relates to drugs and this percentage claim of drugs seized at ports of entry.

The Border Patrol get distracted by caring for and capturing illegal borders crossers as cartels carry their unknown drugs across outside ports of entry. Drug cartels are working on successful passage without detection.

If people want to use airplanes as weapons again, I would think they would avoid TSA checkpoints and get in through meal service or some other easier way to access planes. As we tighten certain areas the vulnerable ones will be used.

Originally Posted by GeorgiaPeach

Stephen Miller said to Chris Wallace last Sunday that we don't know what we don't know as it relates to drugs and this percentage claim of drugs seized at ports of entry.

So true!

We have all seen the video's of those carrying large, heavy backpacks. Why is it hard to imagine them carrying smaller, lighter weight hard drugs?

We don't know how many get through without detection, nor what they are carrying.