Message-ID: <19990419043014.AAC26937@LOCALNAME> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 01:35:18 -0004 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca> Subject: Re: Approaches for Fighting Corruption ... To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
http://www.chron.com/content/story.html/page1/232861FRONT PAGE NEWS from the Thursday, 15 Apr 1999 Houston Chronicle (TX)
STUDY SLAMS CORRUPTION ON BORDER U.S. employees on payrolls of Mexican drug lords, report says
by Deborah Tedford
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.
[...]