Mexican cartels target feds at the border

Houston Chronicle/AP ^ | March 11, 2010 | CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

[SwinneySwitch]

McALLEN — Mexican drug cartels are infiltrating federal law enforcement agencies along the southwest border and those charged with weeding them out say they don’t have the money to catch all the corrupt agents, homeland security officials told a U.S. Senate panel Thursday.

James Tomsheck, assistant commissioner with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Internal Affairs, told a Senate homeland security subcommittee in Washington that only about one in 10 of the new hires for agency jobs are given polygraph tests, and of those, 60 percent are deemed unsuitable for employment.

That means that many who joined the agency during the recent hiring boom and did not take polygraphs could have joined with corruption already in mind, Tomsheck said.

“That 60 percent number is alarming to me,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who chaired the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration.

The Associated Press reported last year that four applicants for border protection jobs were not hired when polygraph tests and background checks confirmed they were infiltrators from drug trafficking operations.

“Transnational criminal organizations are doing all they can to infiltrate CBP through our hiring initiatives,” Tomsheck told the subcommittee.

An AP investigation tallied corruption-related convictions against more than 80 enforcement officials at all levels — federal, state and local — along the southwest border since 2007.

Since 2003, 129 customs officers and Border Patrol agents have been arrested on corruption charges, said Tom Frost, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant inspector general for investigations. That figure included the northern border and other ports of entry. Frost said.

[SwinneySwitch]

“We have found the tactics used by the drug trafficking organizations in their corruption activities are similar to the processes or tactics used by foreign intelligence services as they attempt to recruit or otherwise compromise our officers and agents,”

[J Edgar]

If you are not capable enough to screen the ‘SCREENERS’, why do you exist?
This is beyond Twilight Zone!

[SwinneySwitch]

Ping!

If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.

[USNBandit]

Massive hiring by BP and Customs, and the pursuit of diversity, has made them vulnerable to corruption. All the cartels have to do is find friends and relatives that have clean records to join. As soon as they get on the line they start facilitating loads coming across the border and through the ports.

[ought-six]

What’s all this nonsense about “catching” the bad guys? Just shoot them.

[SentForth5]

Here here!

[microgood]

This should not surprise anyone. During our first Prohibition, they estimated that 70 percent of the Federal agents were on the take. After it ended, the FBI and others did not want them so they formed the first version of the DEA and put them all in there.

Corrupt police, judges, border patrol, and prosecutors is a normal and expected outcome of prohibition and will exist as long as prohibition does. Only this time there is so much more money involved that it is a lot worse.

[Travis McGee]

“Gee, who could have seen THIS coming? Who’da thunk it?”

[crazyhorse691]

I pinged our resident anti-corruption poster to delve deeper into this.

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

Thanks for the ping!

[Squantos]

Folks that have seen danger on the horizon before ?.......:o)

[RobinOfKingston]

... of the new hires ... 60 percent are deemed unsuitable for employment.

Prob'ly about the same for the elected arm of gubmint ... maybe a little higher.