http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/ ... 09253.html

Sept. 23, 2006, 11:21AM
Immigration work force fights corruption

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA AP National Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

OTAY MESA, Calif. — Under the glare of the port lights, federal agents watched as the GMC Yukon approached the immigration booth. Two years of legwork _ interviewing sources, listening to wiretaps and watching just as they were watching now _ had led to this. Aurora Torres, the suspected smuggler, was behind the wheel.

Weeks earlier, agents had heard her on the telephone with her contact.

"Are you going to invite me to the movies tonight?" she asked. "It's going to be four tickets."

"Right at 12," a man responded. "If I can't make it, I'll send you a 9-1-1."

He hadn't made it on that particular day, but tonight everything was going as planned.

Just after 4 a.m., the Yukon eased to a stop at inspection Lane 8 at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, a byway for travelers heading from Mexico into California. An immigration officer approached. After a brief exchange, the Yukon was admitted into the United States.

Nothing unusual _ but for the 11 illegal immigrants sitting inside in plain view.

Torres was arrested. Then agents moved in to take their final suspect into custody.

"Tickets," investigators had concluded, was code for vehicles loaded with undocumented migrants. "Right at 12" was a reference to a work schedule, the midnight to 8 a.m. shift. The clues, they believed, pointed to the secret of Torres' success.

The inspector from Lane 8 was on break when a half-dozen agents approached. "Are you Mike Gilliland?"

He was an ex-Marine with 16 years under his belt at U.S. Customs, but Torres allegedly knew him as something else. Her contact. The one she referred to as "una cosa segura." Translation: A sure thing.

___

A dilemma confronts the nation's immigration work force, one that goes far beyond sealing borders to would-be terrorists, drug smugglers and undocumented migrants, one that is particularly unsettling in a post-Sept. 11 world.

How do you secure the homeland if some of those guarding the gates are dishonest?

Consider: On the California border, at least nine immigration officers have been arrested or sentenced on corruption-related charges in the past 12 months. One of those convicted of smuggling in illegal immigrants turned out to be an illegal immigrant himself, who had used a fake birth certificate to get hired by the Border Patrol.

On the Texas border, at least 10 officers have been charged or sentenced in corruption schemes over the past year, including four Border Patrol agents _ all assigned to the same highway checkpoint _ who admitted taking money to let both drugs and migrants pass.

The numbers are a snapshot, but the picture is clear. There's no shortage of "sure things" among U.S. immigration workers.

More than 600 criminal probes have been launched this fiscal year of immigration employees nationwide, according to internal affairs investigators at the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Complaints range from smuggling, bribery, extortion and fraud to sexual misconduct, assault and theft of government property. The accused, past and present, manned border crossings, highway checkpoints, airports. Others sat behind desks in places like Orange County, Calif., and Fairfax, Va., charged with taking bribes to provide naturalization papers or work permits to ineligible applicants.

Though the cases involve only a fraction of the overall immigration work force, some question whether the government is doing enough to root out corruption in the ranks.

"After the next attack, when they find out that an employee was bribed by a terrorist or bribed by a spy, it's going to be too late," said Michael Maxwell, an ex-police chief who headed internal affairs at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that adjudicates visa, naturalization and asylum applications. "In fact, I think it is too late."

In February, Maxwell resigned as director of the USCIS Office of Security and Investigations and sought whistleblower protection after he began complaining to Congress about what he describes as rampant corruption that's going unprobed.

After Maxwell's office was established in 2004, he asked the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility at Immigration and Customs Enforcement to forward pending inquiries involving USCIS workers.

He wound up with a backlog of 2,771 complaints. One-fifth were criminal allegations, he said, including more than 100 accusations of bribery.

"It's outrageous, absolutely outrageous, how little attention is being focused on this issue when you look at the ramifications on national security," said Maxwell, who informed Congress that complaints included some allegations of employees providing material support to known terrorists or being influenced by foreign intelligence services. While declining to publicly provide details, he cites as one example the case of an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen whose background indicated he'd been trained by "multiple foreign intelligence agencies" but nevertheless was hired by USCIS to review asylum applications. The employee has since resigned.

"Remember, one officer can grant citizenship at the time of his choosing at the place of his choosing to the person of his choosing _ with impunity. So if he wants to give Osama bin Laden U.S. citizenship, he can," Maxwell said. "I can't tell you how many times I heard senior management say ... `Every allegation will be investigated.' Well, guess what, it's not being investigated."

Although the agency disputes that claim, some cases suggest laxness.

Take the case of Robert Schofield, a USCIS district office supervisor in Fairfax, Va., and a federal immigration officer for 30 years. Schofield was arrested in June, accused of illegally granting residency and issuing naturalization certificates to more than 100 unqualified immigrants. A Chinese citizen also was charged for allegedly brokering deals between Schofield and Asian immigrants.

However, over the last 10 years, "numerous" allegations of bribery involving Schofield and immigration applicants have been reported, an agent with the inspector general's office said in a court affidavit. The agent didn't provide specifics, but said Schofield was once demoted for "conduct unbecoming a government employee" and also accused of making $36,000 in unauthorized purchases on his government-issued credit card.

Schofield has been placed on indefinite suspension without pay, said USCIS spokesman Chris Bentley, who declined further comment on Schofield's employment history because of the pending criminal case. Schofield's lawyer did not return Associated Press messages seeking comment.

Then there's Lizandro Martinez, a Customs officer who admitted that for 2 1/2 years he took bribes to allow vehicles crammed with marijuana through his inspection lane at the Progreso International Bridge in Texas. Martinez, who owned a half-million-dollar home outfitted with a movie theater, was paid $10,000 per vehicle. He faces up to life in prison at his scheduled October sentencing.

Martinez had a host of disciplinary problems during his 14-year career, including threatening to retaliate against a police officer who stopped him for speeding, an official with the Office of Professional Responsibility testified during the case. In 1998, inspectors found 1,300 pounds of cocaine in a truck that crossed through Martinez's lane; the driver stated he had been told to use that particular lane.

Investigations brought disciplinary actions: counseling, an oral reprimand, a 14-day suspension. At one point, according to testimony, Martinez was fired but then reinstated after the union stepped in on his behalf. Still another proposed removal was mitigated to a 30-day suspension.

Jim Tomsheck, newly appointed as assistant commissioner for internal affairs at Customs and Border Protection, declined to discuss the Martinez case, although he said legal battles can hinder the dismissal of problem employees who, for whatever reason, were not charged criminally.

He added that managers are examining ways to ensure that those officers are dealt with administratively, and "are removed from the front line ... and can't continue to contaminate the work force."

Part of the problem is a lack of resources.

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility at Immigration and Customs Enforcement share responsibility for investigating criminal misconduct among a total of 72,000 immigration employees _ with 309 investigators.

"Their plates are constantly full," DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner said of his agents, adding that an average of 15,000 allegations against government employees and contractors pour into the office each year. "No, it is not enough people. ... We have cases that we opened three years ago that we're still pursuing."

Others question whether the investigative structure makes sense. It's not clear, for example, whether Customs and Border Protection has the authority to conduct criminal probes of its own employees, who include Border Patrol agents and front-line Customs officers. The majority of criminal investigations of immigration employees involve CBP workers.

Tomsheck said his agency was in the process of building a small corps of investigators "so that we can stay actively involved in policing our own work force." However, Traci Lembke, acting director of the Office of Professional Responsibility, said those investigators are authorized only to handle administrative _ not criminal _ issues.

In response, CBP issued the following statement: "We are working with ICE on all of these issues. We all agree how critical this is to the mission of DHS."

___

It's noon. A muggy day at the Otay Mesa port of entry just outside of San Diego. Eleven lanes are clogged as far as the eye can see with cars, motorcycles, SUVs and vans ferrying folks from Tijuana to schools, jobs and stores in California.

Weaving in and out of the smog jam is a Customs officer, holding a shepherd mix by the leash to sniff out contraband. As cars creep toward the inspection booths, automated scanners register license plates in a computer. Then other Customs officers ask for identification, pop trunks, inspect spare-tire compartments, peer down air vents. If anything seems out of place, vehicles are sent to secondary inspection for a more thorough examination.

This is what port director James Hynes calls "layered screening," every step intended to catch smugglers but also make it more difficult for a corrupt officer to operate under the radar. Other measures include bans on personal cell phones and pagers, which have been used to alert smugglers what inspection lane an officer is working, and unscheduled lane rotations.

"We want lots of eyes and ears out here to layer our capability and be random, flexible and unpredictable. That's our success in the war on drugs. That's our success in alien apprehensions. And that's also our success in maintaining integrity," Hynes said, standing not far from Lane 8, the one Mike Gilliland was working the morning he was arrested.

Hynes and other immigration brass insist corruption is a priority _ but combating it is a challenge, because smugglers are aggressive about targeting and luring in officers. They'll post lookouts just across the border and, using binoculars, zero in on inspectors with perceived vulnerabilities.

Are they tired? Lazy? Flirtatious with women?

Greed is an obvious motivator. Migrants paid upward of $4,000 each to pass through Gilliland's lane at Otay Mesa, investigators said, adding that smugglers use the guarantee of a "sure thing" to demand higher rates. Gilliland's cut was alleged to be $1,500 a head.

"That adds up. Really, really quickly," said FBI agent Andrew Black, who heads the San Diego Border Corruption Task Force.

In Gilliland's case, with as many as four vehicles coming through a night, each one sometimes packed with 10 people or more, it could have added up to a $60,000 profit in a single shift _ about the equivalent of an entire year's salary as an inspector with Customs and Border Protection.

There are other, more complex, reasons seemingly good agents go bad. In some past cases, corrupt agents conspired with friends or family members. Others cite growing discontent with the job, and the relative ease with which a dirty employee can operate.

"We don't do anything, just clear the way, and we get 300 (dollars) per head," ex-Border Patrol agent Eric Balderas said in a wiretapped phone call last year. He's awaiting sentencing in a California corruption case.

Balderas admitted conspiring with fellow agent Oscar Ortiz to allow illegal immigrants into the country. Ortiz was sentenced in July to five years in prison for smuggling at least 100 immigrants, at times transporting them in his Border Patrol truck.

A Mexican citizen, Ortiz used a fake U.S. birth certificate to get hired by the Border Patrol, prompting the agency to re-examine its employees' backgrounds. His attorney, Stephen White, said Ortiz was disenchanted with a job akin to "putting a Band-Aid on an open wound."

"A lot of times there's nothing that they can do," White said. "People just come and they can't stop it."

At sentencing, Ortiz told the judge: "I was blind."

Port director Hynes finds such explanations difficult to swallow. What separates a good agent from a bad one is "what integrity you carry when you get up in the morning," he said. "A guy like Gilliland or others? They sold their integrity, and over time we'll get them."

Most border agents "are honest, hardworking and do a fine job," added FBI agent Black. "However, the ones that are corrupt are really in a position to do this country a lot of harm. They don't know who's going through, and they don't know what's going through. That's the danger."

A convicted felon was among those smuggled through Gilliland's lane the day he was arrested, court documents said.

With the case pending, FBI agents and prosecutors declined to go on record with theories of why Gilliland supposedly turned. Court records allege he worked with Torres and one other female smuggler.

Gilliland, meanwhile, maintains his innocence.

"I've got nothing to hide," he told The Associated Press from his home in Chula Vista as his wife, also a Customs and Border Protection employee, stood by his side.

For now, Gilliland is under house arrest, an electronic monitor clasped to his ankle. The government uniform and badge are gone, and what ultimately becomes of his career and reputation will be decided in a courtroom.