Thread: Sharp rise in bribery cases tests integrity of U.S. border

And yet we have two dedicated border patrol agents that they have locked up for doing their job!

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld ... 3436.story

Sharp rise in bribery cases tests integrity of U.S. border

By Ralph Vartabedian, Richard A. Serrano and Richard Marosi

October 29, 2006

EL PASO, Texas -- Bribery of federal and local officials by Mexican smugglers is rising sharply, and with it the fear that a culture of corruption is taking hold along the 2,000-mile border from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego.

At least 200 public employees have been charged with helping to move narcotics or illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexican border since 2004, at least double the illicit activity documented in prior years, a Los Angeles Times examination of public records has found. Thousands more are under investigation.

Criminal charges have been brought against Border Patrol agents, local police, a county sheriff, motor vehicle clerks, an FBI supervisor, immigration examiners, prison guards, school district officials and uniformed personnel of every branch of the U.S. military, among others. The vast majority have pleaded guilty or been convicted.

Officials in Washington and along the border worry about what lies below the surface. "It is the tip of the iceberg," said James "Chip" Burrus, assistant director of the criminal investigation division of the FBI. "There is a lot more down there. The problem is, you don't know what you don't know."

What is known - from court cases, other public records and dozens of interviews - is alarming enough. Some schemes have displayed considerable sophistication among Mexican drug lords, and their success shows a discouraging willingness by public employees to take tainted money.

Though America's southern border may evoke images of a poor backwater, it is alive with vast amounts of ill-gotten wealth, shadowy organizations that ply the waters of the Rio Grande, and brazen schemes that seem borrowed out of Cold War espionage.

Perhaps the most revealing example of smugglers' savvy was their cultivation of the highest-ranking FBI official in El Paso, Special Agent in Charge Hardrick Crawford.

FBI agents thought they had turned alleged drug kingpin Jose Maria Guardia into an informant, but Guardia was working as a double agent for the Mexican drug lords. He drew Crawford into a personal friendship, and provided a job for Crawford's wife, a country club membership for the couple and family trips to Las Vegas.

In August, after the chummy relationship became public, Crawford was convicted on federal charges of trying to conceal his friendship with Guardia. He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined a half-million dollars.

Drug rings once planted a mole in a federal agency, and officials worry others are lurking. The rings have entangled U.S. agents in sexual relationships. And they have amassed files on individual U.S. agents, with details about their finances, families and habits - even the kind of bicycles their kids ride.

"They hire guys to watch the narcotics agents," says Lee Morgan II, who retired as the head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Douglas, Ariz., this year. "They know what time we get up in the morning. When we go to work. What kind of car your wife drives.

"We had an informant tell us he saw a film of us as we exited our office that was being shown in Mexico. They had our license plate numbers."

The Mexican criminal networks can afford lavish payoffs. Bribery payments have topped $1 million.

Paul K. Charlton, U.S. attorney for Arizona since 2001, is convinced border corruption is worsening - and jeopardizing the trust that U.S. communities place in their government.

"The concern for me is that we can very quickly develop a culture that would be more accepting of that kind of misconduct," Charlton said. "You only have to look south of the border to see what happens when a certain level of corruption is accepted."

Officials warn that the risk of public corruption will grow as Congress and the Bush administration respond to public demands to improve border security. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, wants to add 10,000 employees to its work force of 42,000, most of whom are already stationed along the Mexican border.

"If you increase the number of people on the border, you are going to get more corruption," Burrus said.

Stepped-up border security also makes corruption all the more necessary to smugglers.

"As we tighten up on the border, it will make it harder for the traffickers to get across," said Johnny Sutton, U.S. attorney for Texas' Western District. "You have to be creative about getting your poison into the U.S. Obviously, corrupting the officials is a part of it."

Critics blame sloppy hiring practices, inadequate training and weak internal controls. Agents are vulnerable because morale is "pathetic," stemming in part from illegal immigrants' phony allegations that have unfairly ruined careers, said T.J. Bonner, head of the union for Border Patrol agents.

Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar rejects those claims, saying morale is good because there is more staffing and better equipment. Wages for public employees in the poor border economies are respectable; Border Patrol agents start at about $35,000 a year and can exceed $65,000 with overtime.

Aguilar said the Border Patrol had increased ethics training at its academy and set up anti- corruption programs in the field, and he said it conducted new background checks on its agents every five years. "We are doing everything we can to root out these agents, these criminals, within our organization," Aguilar said.

But such efforts sometimes stand little chance against the greed of weak agents and the power of smugglers with money to spread around.

"They are going to try to find ways to breach our enforcement efforts," Aguilar said. "They will try to flank us, tunnel us, fly over and to corrupt our efforts."

While corruption is growing, the number of internal investigators overseeing a vastly expanding work force is stagnant or even shrinking.

Aguilar, who must rely on other agencies to investigate the Border Patrol, has demanded more prompt and thorough investigations. Others complain that infighting within the Department of Homeland Security has hobbled enforcement.

Michael Maxwell resigned this year as head of internal affairs for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services after clashing repeatedly with Homeland Security over a shortage of resources. When he left, 3,000 allegations of misconduct, including 100 reports of bribery, were uninvestigated, he said.

"Nobody is seriously addressing corruption," Maxwell said. "The corruption is pervasive."

The narcotics networks sometimes receive direct help from local Mexican governments. Last year, federal prosecutors in Arizona charged Police Chief Ramon Robles-Cota of Sonoyta, Mexico, a small town near the Lukeville border crossing, with drug trafficking and bribery.

His swings into Arizona were chauffeured by one of his officers, Julio Cesar Lozano-Lopez, who admitted in federal court that he drove his chief into Arizona twice in 2005 to meet with Border Patrol agents and spread bribe money around. The chief is in federal custody in Arizona, awaiting trial.

In a 2005 wake-up call about the scope of border corruption, a major FBI-led sting in Arizona netted 71 guilty pleas by National Guard members, state prison guards and a federal inspector. Known as Operation Lively Green, the sting demonstrated that large numbers of government employees at the border were willing to take a bribe.

But nobody in government has measured all the criminal cases across every jurisdiction, agency and state.

The Times examined case files, public announcements and other public records dating to 2004 and interviewed officials in every U.S. attorney's district along the border as well as local and federal law enforcement agents and key county prosecutors.

In the past, border corruption was mainly associated with narcotics. But increasingly, immigrant smugglers - who command huge fees from people trying to cross illegally into the U.S. - are also making payoffs.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks called attention the risks posed by human smuggling: Though no terrorists are known to have slipped across the Mexican border yet, many law enforcement officials are deeply worried that corrupt inspectors might let it happen.

"Who's to say a potential terrorist can't get in that way?" asks Jack W. Hook, a special agent in charge of the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general's office in San Diego.

The escalating corruption among federal employees has drawn charges that Homeland Security's screening and training of new employees is sloppy.

Even the most ambitious review of job applicants won't necessarily ferret out all of the problems. Many convicted agents have said financial pressures and other personal dilemmas drove them to cross the line. Smugglers often know how to push the right button.

Agent Aldo Erives told a judge last year that the drug dealers knew that he hitchhiked to his classes at a local college.

"Come on," he said they told him, "you can buy a car if you pass a load through the checkpoint."

The bribery does not surprise me as that is what many Hispanics are used to from back home. All departments that deal with people from countries where bribery is a way of life must be screened. The best ones for screening for it is the DEA. They are constantly messing with you and it works. The bad apples are quickly caught. Some of the games they play for testing purposes include: people trying to get you to go along with them and take some of the money and/or drugs, informing people in return for a bribe among other things.
I think they should look at the Coast Guard as well since it seems that too many Cubans are getting onto land in Florida. If we are so concerned about homeland security, then we should be catching more of them at sea.

Critics blame sloppy hiring practices, inadequate training and weak internal controls. Agents are vulnerable because morale is "pathetic," stemming in part from illegal immigrants' phony allegations that have unfairly ruined careers, said T.J. Bonner, head of the union for Border Patrol agents.

Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar rejects those claims, saying morale is good because there is more staffing and better equipment. Wages for public employees in the poor border economies are respectable; Border Patrol agents start at about $35,000 a year and can exceed $65,000 with overtime.

Isn't this the guy on Lou Dobbs show that was resentful of the words "illegal & undocumented?" Said something to the effect that no one was ILLEGAL?

I think that you are correct. That comment was made on Lou Dobbs and I think he was the one that made it. I remembered that comment as it enfuriated me.

This makes the case for the border fence along our entire border even more compelling.