Thread: Some U.S. customs inspectors working for drug cartels

Some U.S. customs inspectors working for drug cartels

Traffickers have stepped up their efforts to corrupt American border police. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Published: 9:38 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009

SAN DIEGO — At first, Luis Alarid seemed well on his way to becoming a customs agency success story. He had risen from poverty and earned praise and commendations while serving in the Army and Marines, and returned to Southern California to fulfill a goal of serving in law enforcement.

But early last year, after a few months as a U.S. customs inspector, he was waving in trucks from Mexico carrying loads of marijuana and illegal immigrants. Alarid, 32, pocketed about $200,000 in cash that paid for a $15,000 motorcycle, flat-screen televisions, a laptop computer and more.

Some investigators say that Alarid, 32, who was paid off by a Mexican smuggling crew that included several members of his family, intended to work for smugglers all along. At one point, Alarid, who was sentenced to federal prison in February, told investigators that he had researched how much prison time he might get for his crimes and believed he could do it "standing on his head."

Alarid's case isn't the only one that has law enforcement officials worried that Mexican traffickers — facing beefed up security on the border that now includes miles of new fencing, floodlights, drones, motion sensors and cameras — have stepped up their efforts to corrupt the border police.

Margarita Crispin, a former customs inspector in El Paso, pleaded guilty in April 2008 and received a 20-year prison sentence in what the FBI considers one of the more egregious corruption cases.

Crispin helped smuggle thousands of pounds of marijuana over three years, almost from the time she began working for the agency.

She waved off drug-sniffing dogs in her lane, complaining she was afraid of them, although investigators later learned she had dogs as pets.

"She is someone who from the beginning said this would be a good job to help the people I am associated with," said Keith Byers, who supervises the FBI's border corruption units.

Drug traffickers research potential targets, anticorruption investigators said, exploiting the cross-border clans and relationships that define the region, offering money, sex, whatever it takes.

But, with the border police in the midst of a hiring boom, they think traffickers are pulling out the stops, even soliciting some of their own operatives to apply for jobs.

In recent years, the United States has spent billions of dollars — $11 billion this year alone for Customs and Border Protection — to tighten the border between the United States and Mexico, building up physical barriers and going on a hiring spree to develop the nation's largest law enforcement agency to patrol the area.

But smuggling can be appealing. The average customs officer makes $70,000 a year, a sum that can be dwarfed by what smugglers pay to get just a few trucks full of drugs into the United States.

The FBI is planning to add three multiagency corruption squads to the 10 already on the Southwest border, and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, the department's primary investigative arm, has also added agents, but such hiring hasn't kept up with the growth of the agency they are entrusted to watch over.

Overall, arrests of Customs and Border Protection agents and officers has increased 40 percent in the last few years, outpacing the 24 percent growth in the agency itself, according to Department of Homeland Security inspector general's office. The office has 400 open investigations, each often spanning a few years or more.

Byers said corruption posed a national security threat because guards seldom verify what is in the vehicles they have agreed to let pass, raising concerns "they could be letting something much more dangerous into the U.S."

http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/so ... 29467.html

Related http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-182087-alarid.html

Good God, it's unimaginable to think of what's going to happen if the illegal aliens working for the cartels and terrorist groups ever get amnesty and have a legal right to hold these jobs

Further, what's going to keep them out of the FBI and task forces created to combat this trend? Nothing at all.........

Disturbing, absolutely disturbing.

How many police police officers have done the same? They have caught immigration staff selling legally obtained greencards in the past. It almost always ends up being the same group of people.