STUDY SLAMS CORRUPTION ON BORDER

U.S. Employees On Payrolls Of Mexican Drug Lords, Report Says

Mexican drug lords are bribing federal agents to give them information, wave
their smugglers through border checkpoints and even employing them to bring
drugs into the United States, a federal report says.

After a yearlong study, the General Accounting Office reported that it found
that drug interdiction efforts in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California
are compromised by federal agents and other field staff on the payrolls of
the Mexican drug cartels.

The report concluded there is a "continuing and serious threat" to corrupt
Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, U.S. Customs Service
inspectors and Border Patrol agents along the Mexican border and the
agencies are not doing enough to stop it.

"The enormous sums of money being generated by drug trafficking have
increased the threat for bribery," said the report to the Senate Caucus on
International Narcotics Control.

INS and Customs Service officials said the threat of corruption is real, but
only with a small number of employees.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen Colgate and William Riley, director of
planning for the Customs Service, noted that only 28 INS and customs
employees were prosecuted for drug-related corruption along the Southwest
border from 1992 to 1997.

"Department of Justice (which includes the INS) believes that 28 instances
of corruption out of 9,600 agents over about a six-year period is a
commendable demonstration of the integrity of ours and (customs) personnel,"
he said.

Riley also pointed out that GAO's conclusions are based on a limited review
of criminal cases and internal affairs files -- 123 randomly selected
corruption cases from fiscal 1997, of which 72 involved INS and 51 involved
customs.

Although he readily acknowledged there are procedural problems that must be
addressed, Riley maintained that "corruption is not endemic in the agency."

Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, agreed that corruption is a serious
problem on the border, but said Congress shoulders much of the blame for
underfunding both agencies.

"The first line of defense is customs and they are insufficiently staffed
and underequipped," he said.

With cross-border trade up more than 200 percent since the passage of NAFTA,
Rodriguez said it often takes days for commercial traffic to clear the
border. For example, he said, customs has only two X-ray machines that can
scan an 18-wheeler, and 5,000 trucks per day crowd the checkpoint at Laredo
alone.

About 1,300 INS and 2,000 customs inspectors must inspect foot and vehicular
traffic at the 25 entry points along the 1,962-mile border from Brownsville
to Imperial Beach, Calif., 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Last year,
the Customs Service logged 77 million vehicle entries into Texas, New Mexico
and Arizona.

Between those ports of entry, about 6,300 INS Border Patrol agents patrol
vast expanses of sparsely inhabited terrain in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.

The GAO cited five ways that federal employees helped drug smugglers, with
examples of each:

- - Waving vehicles through without inspection. For several years, it said, an
immigration inspector in El Paso gave smugglers his work schedule and lane
assignment, allowing them to drive vehicles loaded with up to 1,000 pounds
of marijuana through without inspection.

- - Coordinating movement of drugs in remote areas between ports of entry. A
Border Patrol agent in Douglas, Ariz., it said, had telephoned marijuana
smugglers to tell them where loads could be brought across. The agent then
picked the loads up in his government vehicle and took it to another location.

- - Transporting drugs past Border Patrol checkpoints. An agent in Falfurrias
drove marijuana through the checkpoints manned by his friends, then
deposited it at a safe house before returning to work.

- - Selling the drugs themselves. One Border Patrol agent in Naco, Ariz.,
seized drugs, then sold them to dealers.

- - Selling drug intelligence information. A customs operational analysis
specialist was paid to tip off importers suspected of smuggling drugs.

The GAO concluded that INS and the Customs Service failed to fully implement
employee integrity measures or evaluate procedural weaknesses revealed in
the cases that were prosecuted.

Many long-term employees did not receive advanced integrity training and the
agencies failed to complete the required employee re-investigations every
five years for more than three-fourths of the personnel scheduled to have
them during fiscal 1995-1997. Financial disclosure information was either
too limited or not reviewed, the GAO found.

Full implementation of those policies would identify employees who were at
risk of being corrupted, the report stated.

One immigration inspector told GAO interviewers that he became involved with
a drug smuggler because he had substantial credit card debt and was on the
verge of bankruptcy.

A more complete financial disclosure, the GAO said, would have raised red
flags when a midlevel Border Patrol agent, who had no credit card debt or
mortgage, acquired a 40-acre ranch with an indoor, Olympic-size swimming
pool, five cars, a van, two boats, 100 weapons and $45,000 in treasury bills.

GAO also recommended that traffic be randomly assigned to inspections lane
at border crossings.

"Both INS and customs have policies and procedures designed to ensure the
integrity of their employees. However, neither agency is taking full
advantage of its policies, procedures and the lessons to be learned from
closed corruption cases to fully address the increased threat of employee
corruption on the Southwest border," the report stated.

Government witnesses have testified in several drug trials that U.S.
officials took payoffs from smugglers who brought cocaine, marijuana and
methamphetamine across the Mexico border.

Drug cartel members testified in 1996 that drug kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego
kept a stash of cash and gifts for U.S. law enforcement officers to help
bring in large amounts of cocaine.

Two INS detention officers and one former INS officer used an agency bus to
ferry cocaine and marijuana past a federal checkpoint in Brownsville while
taking illegal immigrants back into Mexico.

A 1995 investigation also found that drugs were readied for pick-up at an
INS facility in Brownsville.

And in 1997, six former law enforcement officers in Donna, Texas, were
indicted for helping traffickers smuggle 1,700 pounds of marijuana across
the border.

But INS spokesman Greg Gagne said the GAO did not give the agency credit for
programs that are in place, such as the leadership and ethics training
center in Dallas, or consider the effects of years of underfunding.

Rodriguez said he has asked that 2,000 additional customs inspectors and
agents be hired nationwide and that $1.2 billion be given to the agency over
seven years to upgrade the computer and automation system that processes
commercial traffic at land ports of entry.

He told the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee on Tuesday that the
increase is necessary because of the growing trade across the U.S.-Mexico
border and crackdown on narcotics smuggling.

"These individuals are trying to do a job without sufficient equipment or
personnel. They aren't even fully computerized," he said.