ALLEGED SMUGGLER WAS CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION MANAGER

EL PASO -- The Customs and Border Protection employee arrested on
bribery and marijuana smuggling charges was an administrator at the
Ysleta Port of Entry, a prosecutor said Monday.

Martha Alicia Garnica, 43, a former CBP inspector and El Paso police
officer, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Mesa for a
detention hearing. Mesa said he would withhold a decision on bond for
Garnica until Dec. 1.

Mark Randazzo, a special agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, testified that between April and November, Garnica met
and spoke on the phone with a drug trafficker several times. He said
Garnica and the drug trafficker instructed and paid a CBP officer to
allow drugs and undocumented immigrants into the country. Randazzo did
not say the drug trafficker's name.

But he said that Garnica and Carlos Francisco Ramirez-Rosales took
over as heads of the operation when the trafficker's brother was
killed at the Seven & Seven bar in Juarez in August, a shooting in
which two El Pasoans were slain.

Testimony also unveiled the name of a fourth person arrested by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials Wednesday after they
raided Garnica's home on the East Side.

The new suspect is Arturo Leal-Rosales, 39. He is the brother of
Ramirez-Rosales, who was arrested at Garnica's home on bribery and
smuggling charges.

Garnica's nephew Edgar Ely Meraz, 23, was also arrested Wednesday.
Meraz and Leal-Rosales were already facing state charges of possession
of marijuana, but ICE agents arrested them on federal charges of
conspiracy, importation and possession of narcotics after the raid.

Prosecutors allege that Garnica paid a CBP officer $500 to allow an
undocumented immigrant into the country, Randazzo said. The immigrant,
Cesar Leal, is another brother of Ramirez-Rosales. The CBP officer
helped investigators build their case against Garnica.

Aaron Coello, special agent with the Department of Homeland Security's
Office of the Inspector General, said Garnica and her family may have
had illicit income. He said her 21-year-old daughter, Sujey Sanchez,
had three bank accounts under her name and has owned commercial
property in Juarez since she was 18. Garnica also owns a house in the
11600 block of Socorro Road.

Coello said Garnica paid for trips for her family to go to Cancun and
Mexico City, where she has family members, and for a cruise to Barbados.

Federal agents seized four late-model vehicles, including two Hummers,
from Garnica's home in the 11400 block of Rex Baxter Drive. They also
confiscated lists of names with Mexican cell phone numbers, codes with
phrases and a handwritten map of the Ysleta Port of Entry.

Russell M. Aboud, Garnica's attorney, said the injury Garnica
sustained after she was shot in the left hand in March 1996 while
working as an El Paso police officer gave her $140,000 through a
workers compensation plan.

Aboud on Monday withdrew from representing Meraz because of conflict
of interest. Meraz and Ramirez-Rosales agreed to hire an attorney
before the detention hearing on Dec. 1.

Garnica, Ramirez-Rosales, Meraz and Leal-Rosales are being held in El
Paso County Jail. As for Garnica's job status, she is on leave without
pay, CBP officials said.